Ben Braithwaite

Maybe this is a literary trope. Maybe people need that fantasy, that hope for a rainbow.

I wrote BYE BYE I LOVE YOU because I believe people can find comfort in the real. This is how it's going to end. Probably in silence. Last words will be yours, not his. Also, terminal lucidity is very rare.

Ugh...Would be very interested in what you find out. Speech Language Pathology is in the process of becoming a thing in the Caribbean. Really hoping that we can convince people to build the field here on more enlightened principles, rather than importing more ableism and audism.

Hey SLPs/Deafies/other people who deal with ASHA. I know for a while there was contention re: whether a deaf-signing person could give a presentation at ASHA in ASL or be a certified SLP. To what degree was that "official" policy, and is that still the case?

Linguists will really say "the forbidden experiment" like people aren't performing it on the majority of deaf children in this country every day 💀

@davidmcgaughey.bsky.social On the off-chance that you weren't already aware, I felt duty-bound to draw your attention to Jasper Scarrott, darts player www.facebook.com/share/v/1Mkr...

Thank you so much for this! I've sent it round to colleagues at the University of the West Indies, and hope that it will help us to come up with our own position statement.

I'd love to hear any feedback on this position statement we have developed. It aims to clearly communicate to students our approach to using AI, and the underlying reasons and motivations for our approach. Would you use something like this in your teaching? What changes would you make?

And besides—what about the pool of human translators, especially deaf translators, who see mediocre AI taking over work they can still do much better?

In honor of the new home for #ASLSignbank, I thought it was time to give #Glossgesang a home on Bluesky.

What's #Glossgesang you ask?
Why thank you for asking!

It's this:
Always present signed language data in a visual format without relying solely on glossing

Donate to Deaf researcher from Mexico to attend summer school, organized by Shane Gilchrist Erik Arellano, a passionate Deaf researcher from Mexico, has this … Shane Gilchrist needs your support for Deaf researcher from Mexico to attend summer school

Fundraiser for my collaborator Erik Arellano a Deaf Mexican linguist to attend summer school in Berlin

I’m constantly reminded of how deaf linguists esp. from the Global South, make a unique contribution to signed language linguistics especially when it comes to researching their own signed languages. Yet they are constantly denied educational opportunities in higher academia.

Does anyone have any advice for how to develop better writing habits as a late-diagnosed ADHD academic? I want to write a book or two, but struggle enormously with the this kind of big task. How does one avoid either hyper-focusing for a week then burning out, or just getting overwhelmed? Help!

Can anyone recommend research supporting the need for deaf children to have early access to a *community of signers*, including peers and adults, not just one or two signing teachers? Thanks!

Sharing bc: 1. Fahimah did a great project, and I want people to know about the work Caribbean students are doing; 2. one of the people in the conversation we analysed died recently; and 3. Jon Henner gave us the most Hennerishly encouraging review ever. Thinking of Florence and Jon with gratitude.

So, languaging in the Bay Islands community is multimodal. This is not a visual language on its way to become a "fully-fledged tactile language." It's a "fully-fledged" multimodal language, in which people use different channels depending on the interactional context.

Illustration depicting a conversation between two signers in Roatan. Both are seated. On the left, a deaf-blind man holds the right hand of his hearing-sighted interlocutor (seated on the right), and traces on her forearm with the index finger of his right hand. The caption reads "Figure 5. Use of the tactile channel with a hearing-sighted addressee (right)."

It is also clear that tactile methods are not just a last resort, to be employed when one's interlocutor is blind. We mention that tactile signing is often used when addressing hearing-sighted people. It can be used for stylistic and other reasons (which we hope to explore in a future publication).

Illustration from the article showing a man on the right and a woman on the left, both seated. Both the man and the woman's hands are held up in the air. The caption reads "Figure 10. S2 throwing S1's hands into the air to end his turn."

She documented a variety of ways in which the turn-taking was efficiently regulated, the most spectacular being the throwing of one's interlocutor's hands in the air to signal the end of a turn.

This article was based on Fahimah's undergraduate project. She looked at how turn-taking is regulated in a conversation between two signers from the community. Both signers were deaf-blind, though one had some vision. She found visual and tactile techniques were used in the conversation.

There's very little work on the signing traditions that have come out of small communities with deaf-blind people in them, particularly outside the Global North. I know of three communities in the Caribbean where Usher Syndrome has been relatively common & expect there are many more internationally

Deaf, deaf-blind, and hearing people have been signing in Roatan for over 100 years, using visual and tactile channels. Data for the paper come from a project I worked on with Kris Ali and Ian Dhanoolal with support from the Endangered Languages Documentation Project www.elararchive.org/dk0504/

Last year I published an article with Fahimah Ali called "Multimodal Languaging in a Signing Community in the Bay Islands of Honduras" about ways in which deaf-blind people in a small community use language. So here's a thread to get me started on here. muse.jhu.edu/article/928057

Just write alt text ya weenies

Thanks so much for sharing from TISLR. I was far too tired after SIGN10 to think about going, but it's lovely to follow a little on here!

From David Graeber's book The Utopia of Rules: The promotion of college as a requirement for a middle-class life . . . has resulted in the exclusion of the non-college educated from professions of public influ- ence. In 1971, 58 percent of journalists had a college degree. Today, 92 percent do, and at many publications, a graduate degree in journalism is required-despite the fact that most renowned journalists have never studied journalism.

(Graeber 2015)

Lina Hou’s keynote, MIND-PING: Grammars and Epistemologies, challenges us to rethink multilanguage, knowledge, and Eurocentric Deaf epistemologies 🙌🏽
#Sign10
@linasigns.bsky.social

I'm slowly uploading pictures from #Sign10 in Trinidad for all that couldn't attend. It was worth all the effort to attend.

#Sign10 invited the local deaf communities to attend the conference. I met so many people, think I left a bit of my heart with them in Trinidad.

Nicky Macias’s presentation explores how embracing nonbinary focal sites empowers multiple identities and fosters inclusivity in multilingual sign languages #Sign10

Kris M. Ali’s presentation delves into the challenges of interpreting Queer and Trans sign languaging in Trinidad. #Sign10

Picture of current Network members

Picture of panel workshop

Panel discussion

Picture of panel discussion

I found motivation when I attended the panel discussion on the Deaf Caribbean Academic Network at #Sign10. I was empowered to see how the deaf academics used Video Diaries and in person meetings to help cope with inequities and inaccessibilities in education.

Dr. Sharon Hill presenting at Sign10 conference in Trinidad

Surprise flowers to Dr. Hill from Mr. Hill!

Audience pic at Sign10

Presenting was super fun at #Sign10. Thank you for allowing me to present my research on how deaf community members determined that African American English and culture can be successfully conveyed in ASL. (Thx hubby for the flowers!)