Signing and belonging in Nepal / Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Deaf people--Nepal.

Deaf people.

Deaf people--Means of communication--Nepal.

Sign language.

Anthropological linguistics.

Deaf people--Means of communication.

Nepal.

Physical Description:

xi, 135 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Washington, DC : Gallaudet University Press, 2016.

Summary:

In this book, Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway presents an accessible examination of deafness in Nepal that looks at the social, historical, and cultural factors that have shaped today's Deaf community. As a linguistic anthropologist, she describes the emergence of Nepali Sign Language and deaf sociality in the social and historical context of Nepal during the last decades before the Hindu Kingdom became a secular republic. She then shows how the adoption of an eth no-linguistic model interacted with the ritual pollution model, or the prior notion that deafness results from bad karma. Her focus is on the impact of these competing and co-existing understandings of deafness on three groups: signers who adopted deafness as an ethnic identity, homesigners whose ability to adopt that identity is hindered by their difficulties in acquiring Nepali Sign Language, and hearing Nepalis who interact with Deaf signers. Comparing these contexts demonstrates that both the ethno-linguistic model and the ritual pollution model, its seeming foil, draw on the same basic premise: that both persons and larger social formations are mutually constituted through interaction. Signing and Belonging in Nepal is an ethnography that studies a rich and unique Deaf culture while also contributing to larger discussions about social reproduction and social change. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 "I See That You Are Deaf" 1

2 Historical and Cultural Context 19

3 "My Mother Doesn't Look Like That": Nepali Sign Language as Mother Tongue 40

4 "Here in Nepal There Are No Old Deaf People": Homesigners, Copying, and Competence 65

5 "Action Speaks": Producing Bikasi Hearing People in the Bakery Café 89

6 Deaf in a "New Nepal" 109.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (page 119-128) and index.

ISBN:

9781563686641

1563686643

OCLC:

930257243