Until recently linguistic and sociolinguistic research on Deaf people and their sign languages has been a very poorly studied scientific area in Hungary. Sign languages are conventional linguistic systems based on autonomous rules different from other sign languages and spoken languages. Only for a few laypersons (and even scientists) is it evident that Deaf communities acquiring and using sign language can be considered as bilingual and bicultural linguistic minorities, minorities both in cultural and sociological sense. In the field of sociology those human groups whose ethnic origin, race, norms, values, and language are subject to discrimination or opression by dominant human groups are to be called minorities.
Deaf bilingual communities can be characterized by (1) a long-scale maintenance of bilinguality and biculturality caused by total hearing loss; (2) members of the community are not concentrated in one region of a country but live widely dispersed everywhere; (3) in many countries of the world they are not recognized as bilingual and bicultural communities, either their sign-languages as natural languages. Exceptions are the United States, Sweden and some African countries. In 1981 the Swedish Parliament acknowledged the right of Deaf people to be educated in their own language (Swedish Sign Language) at all levels of education.
About 70 millions of Deaf people live all around the world who, in their everyday social interactions, communicate with each other in sign language. There are areas in the world where, as a consequence of endogamy, the birthrate of Deaf children is very high. In these areas hearing people use both sign language and oral language and hearing and Deaf people constitute stable and coherent communities. Such a community is a village in Indonesia where everybody uses kata kolok (deaf talk) or Martha’s Vineyard where by the end of the last century the rate of Deaf people was almost ten times higher than in other parts of the world.
The number of Deaf people living in Hungary is estimately 60 thousand while about 300 thousand Hungarian citizens suffer from serious hearing disability. Members of the latter group, however, identify themselves very rarely to be bilingual. Even the self-judgement of a Deaf person to be a bilingual is often problematic because since the Milan Conference in 1880 surdopedagogy has entirely given up to concern with sign languages from a linguistic point of view preferring oralism to education in sign language. In Hungary, like in many other countries, the institutional objective of surdopedagogy has become the acquisition of the spoken language which is very difficult to learn and to use for Deaf people. The 1993 Minority Law which assign manyfold linguistic human rights to 13 (ethnic) linguistic minorities does not make any reference to this special group.

MAIN OBJECTIVES
Andersson (1994: 92) points out that “the language and culture of deaf people should not be manipulated by outsiders for the sake of political, administrative or societal convenience. We should instead try to convert the language and culture of deaf people into resources in education.”

(1) The main goal of my project is to develop an interdisciplinary university curriculum on Deaf studies embedded in a theoretical and methodological framework of linguistics, linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, sociology, social psychology, minority human rights and education. Maybe the most pungent point of the curriculum is to make students see the social and scientific importance of an anthropological attitude. They have to learn how to study, treat and help Deaf people as bilinguals, members of a linguistic minority, instead of disabled persons. The pathological viewpoint which considers deafness as an illness to be erased encounters in Hungarian culture and society with discrimination and stereotypes.
Numerous institutions have comitted extensive effort and money to promoting the pathological disability construction through emphasizing that the concept of deafness is differently constructed in Deaf cultures than in hearing cultures. In the academic, political and educational discourse the term ‘deaf community’ refers to all people with serious hearing impairment, according to the model of ‘the disability community’ in order to legitimate the acculturational ideology of Deafness. Deaf community as a linguistic minority refers to “a much smaller group with a distinct manual language, culture, and social organization” (Lane 1997: 161). In this latter sense, deafness can be viewed as a social variety.
The implementation of the proposed multidisciplinary curriculum and the scientific findings of the written research reports may help in building a greater awareness of the difference between hearing-impairment and cultural Deafness; greater acceptance of the Hungarian National Sign Language; reducing of language barriers; culturally tolerant hearing society, forming educational policy, legislation and public discourse.
During the research phase of the curriculum development lectures will be delivered at Eötvös Loránd University, Department of Modern Hungarian, Budapest, as like as at Janus Pannonius University, Graduate School of Applied Linguistics, Pécs.
As the main focuses of the curriculum, I wish to elaborate the methodology of teaching and assessment of the following fields:

Historical overview
Deaf and dumb in Ancient Greece
Oralism and manualism: The history of Deaf education

Deafness as a social psychological issue
Disability and society
Social stigma and stereotypes
 Attitudes

Ethnographic approach to signing communities

Sociolinguistics of Deaf communities
Sociolinguistic variation in sign languages
Sign language use
Pragmatic features

Language contact
Types and characteristics of Deaf bilingualism
Sign language as the first language
Second language acquisition in the Deaf
Literacy practices

Grammatical features of natural sign languages

Language policy and planning
Language planning and bilingual education
Sign language and linguistic human rights
National sign languages and language policies

Deafness as a sociocultural phenomenon
Deaf world in a hearing world
Deaf literature;
Deaf social movements

(2) In addition, I will investigate whether majority (hearing) and minority (Deaf) groups differ in their cognitive representations of their own and each other’s sociocultural position. In line with social identity principles and the socio-psychological, cognitive mechanisms of stereotyping, I attempt to analyze how and why dominant group implements social, media and educational policies aimed at constructing and reconstructing “normal” perceptions to the advantage of their own identity needs. Besides discourse analysis I will also use questionnaire and interview technique.
 

There is a growing social and scientific need for integration of research on sign languages with research on bilingualism and minority language rights. Although oralism versus manualism is a continuous battle in many countries spurred on by national and international movements in education and human rights, educational policies in Central and Eastern Europe should accept the use of sign languages and accord them the status of language.
 
 

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