The moral and practical right to acquire and use sign language in wider society is held by deaf communities to be central to their participation as citizens. Initially, advocacy for sign language rights were negotiated in the territory of disability advocacy and accessibility provisions, but recently deaf communities around the world have increasingly couched claims for recognition as sign language users within the discourse of linguistic human rights (Murray 2015) and language policy (Wilcox, Krausneker, and Armstrong 2012). The focus of this paper is to evaluate practical gains and obstacles in this shift to a language policy paradigm, illustrated by evidence from the case of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL), and other national case studies documented for a forthcoming volume that surveys sign language recognition campaigns internationally (De Meulder, Murray and McKee, forthcoming).
Currently, over 30 countries have legal recognition of their respective sign languages in forms ranging from constitutional amendment or independent language laws, to implicit recognition embedded in legislation such as disability access (de Meulder 2015). Unusually by world standards, the New Zealand government enacted official language status for NZSL in 2006. It is now possible to begin evaluating implementation and outcomes of the law, in relation to the hopes of the community, and in the context of declining vitality of NZSL (McKee 2017). Commentators on language planning generally observe that achieving progress in practical implementation is far more problematic than achieving legal recognition, for administrative, social and political reasons (eg, Walsh & McCleod 2008). Eleven years post-recognition, the NZSL situation illustrates the time-scale of achieving tangible change and practical challenges in implementation, such as community representatives being invited to participate strategically in the domain of government policy, a discourse which presents barriers to accessibility.
Identifying strategies and issues in countries that have gained sign language recognition can provide insight for other minority language groups that are still advancing their claims. Constraints and successes reflect the status of sign language users engaging in political systems, as well as highlighting strategies and problems that occur in language policy implementation generally.
