A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

The national political situation is chaotic and not many sources exist in order to trace back the historical stratifications of legislative proposals and Draft Laws which have had no effect.

            The bill (n. 37/S) proposed in March 2011 included an explicit reference to the use of LIS in public and private context. Specifically, it included a statement (art. 2, subsection 1b) concerning the use of LIS in schools and universities and the realisation of specific programs for the education of professional figures, such as teachers and interpreters. It also stated that LIS must be integrated among the courses offered in both undergraduate and postgraduate programs, promoting the use of LIS and other technologies among students and teachers in order to allow the communication with deaf people. Furthermore, the bill includes dispositions to promote the use of LIS in public and private administrations and in the media, through subtitles and other tools, to grant full accessibility to information. Finally, it established that hearing aids, speech therapy and other technical means must be provided along with LIS, in order to remove communication barriers and to leave deaf people the freedom of choice. The bill was discussed in the Chamber of Deputies in May 2011, but after this debate a totally different approach was adopted. Representatives of all political parties accepted the use of the term Linguaggio o tecnica comunicativa mimico-gestuale (lit. ‘mimed-gestural language or communication technique’) rather than Italian Sign Language. Such definition appeared to be a serious step back within the process of LIS promotion. In fact, the adoption of this term contradicted the international declaration and ignored thirty-years of linguistic research supporting the dignity of this language. Moreover, the participants agreed in claiming that technological innovations make sign languages useless, thus ignoring the fact that not all kinds of deafness can be treated with the use of hearing aids. Such bill probably enhanced the misconception that bilingualism negatively interferes with the correct acquisition of the spoken language. On the contrary, there is increasing evidence, both at an international and national level that the use of the sign language promotes the correct acquisition of the spoken language. Thanks to an increasing of political and social measures, many schools and educational centres, today, are inclined to integrate sign language as a social inclusion tool for Deaf children. Bilingual/bimodal education programs are growing in visibility, especially with the rise of awareness of the Deaf Community (SOCIO-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 2.4). However, the lack of official language planning represents an obstacle to the final disclosure of LIS in educational and training environments.

            New encouragement for the promotion of LIS and LISt comes from the Law n. 302 of 2017, even though no national funds are provided for supporting the organisation of courses and educational structures. As a result, training courses in LIS and LISt and other initiatives depend on local and national associations which support Deaf communities.

Most of the initiatives which support and promote the recognition of LIS are carried out by the Ente Nazionale Sordi, ENS (‘Italian National Agency of the Deaf’) (SOCIO-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 1). It is present across Italy through local clubs and it represents a crucial national referent for Deaf people in the dialogue with political institutions. Furthermore, since its creation (1932), ENS promotes the use of sign language at all levels of the everyday life, being primarily involved in the definition of language planning. Specifically, a specialized department of ENS takes care of issues related to educational policies, university accessibility, bilingualism and training of interpreters and other professional figures. ENS is not only an association promoting the recognition and use of LIS, but it is also important for the preservation of the cultural heritage related to LIS. Indeed, the libraries of many of the local clubs have collected publications about deafness, sign languages and the Deaf world and they represent an important archive for Deaf culture and history. Moreover, ENS is the promoter of many national and local workshops, seminars and conferences about various topics related to LIS. For the important impact they had, we recall here three conferences on LIS which were held in Trieste in 1995, Genoa in 1998, and Verona in 2007.

            However, as anticipated before, the picture is not so homogeneous and favourable everywhere, as in Italy there are also some associations which support a strict oralist tradition and deny the use of LIS for deaf children education. One of the most famous associations overtly against the use of LIS is the Italian Families Associated for Defending deaf Rights (FIADDA). According to the members of this association, it is impossible to define a community on the basis of a physical deficit. The association fears that through the official recognition of LIS, deaf people will be kept in a state of cultural, economic and power dependency due to their linguistic closure.

            Despite the difficulties that such internal oppositions can create, this debate is a remarkable sign of vitality within the Deaf Community. In the past thirty years, many changes took place which modified the domain of the use of LIS. Thanks to the advances in linguistic and psycholinguistics studies which allowed to prove that LIS is a natural language. The Deaf Community has started to use LIS with pride for everyday communications, and not just in a domestic environment, becoming more aware of its own rights. After the discussion of the bill (n. 37/S) at the chamber of Deputies, a unified movement composed by hearing and Deaf people (Movimento LIS subito, ‘Movement LIS now’) was created online in support of the recognition of LIS. The movement organised a three-day protest in Rome (March 25-27, 2011) to request the return to the original proposal, claiming that the definition of mimed-gestural languages is not just wrong, but offensive.

            Together with ENS, another important supporter of the promotion of LIS is the Academic World: universities and academic researchers collaborate to support and give visibility to the importance of LIS recognition. In Italy, research on LIS began in the late 1970s, thanks to a group of scholars at the National Council of Research (CNR). They started with the investigation of the process of language acquisition and language mastery in deaf children, which was first analysed by the team led by Virginia Volterra, Elena Pizzuto, and Elena Radutsky, in collaboration with ENS. Soon after, some deaf researchers joined the group: Serena Corazza, Emanuela Cameracanna, Anna Folchi, Paola Pinna, Paolo Rossini, and Benedetto Santarelli. The research carried out by the CNR also focuses on the grammar of LIS, on sign writing projects and on the acquisition of LIS in both deaf and hearing children.

            About 20 years later, in the late 1990s, at the University of Salerno, professor Sandro Zucchi opened a second vein of research focusing on the formal aspects of LIS Linguistics. A few years later, he moved to the University of Milan and continued working on this project with professor Carlo Cecchetto from the University of Milan-Bicocca. Quite soon, some deaf people started to contribute to their research. Furthermore, in collaboration with the national association for Deafblind people in Italy (Lega del Filo d’Oro), the Milan group started a research project on the tactile variety of LIS, the sign language used by Deafblind people.

            A crucial step that allowed to spread LIS within the national borders and later on to train students in the language and linguistics of LIS was the introduction of an optional LIS course among the classes offered at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice starting from 1999, thanks to the interest of professor Anna Cardinaletti. In 2002, the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice offered the first official bachelor degree program in LIS. Since then, students can choose LIS from 17 foreign languages. Ca’ Foscari is very much committed to the promotion of LIS offering both a bachelor’s degree (BA) and a master’s degree (MA). Today, in the BA program various courses on LIS and Deaf culture are available: three language courses of LIS, three courses of Deaf culture, a course in LIS linguistics, a course in Tactile Italian Sign Language, and two courses in Linguistic for deafness and hearing impairments. The MA program offers a course in Linguistics for deafness and hearing impairments, a general course of LIS and a course in advanced LIS linguistics. In 2011, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice hired the first teacher of LIS with a permanent position within an Italian University and, in the same year, a research position was created for a linguist working on sign language linguistics.

            From the year 2015, the University of Catania (in its branch in Ragusa) within the course in Mediazione linguistica e interculturale (‘Linguistic and Intercultural Mediation’) offers a BA degree with the possibility to study LIS. The University of Catania has also enrolled a linguist teaching and carrying out research on sign language linguistics and a lecturer of LIS.

            Together with the universities of Venice and Catania, one of the main institutions which provides formational courses of LIS is ENS. Within ENS, a central administration provides detailed guidelines establishing the number of grades, the main objectives and the contents to be acquired in each grade. The general program of LIS courses is divided into three main stages: the first one consists in a short introduction to LIS (20-40 hours) which provides a general overview of LIS and Deaf culture; the second focuses on the teaching of LIS language and is structured into three levels: beginner (120 hours), intermediate (150 hours) and advanced (210 hours) level, which provides extensive theoretical and practical knowledge, and the third stage consists in the professional grade for training students in three different professions: technical operators, educators and interpreters.

            Before each course starts, FALiCSEU (a specific department of ENS responsible for the quality of teaching programs) has to approve them. For this reason, three national registers of LIS teachers have been created: one for teachers of language, one for teachers of grammar and Deaf culture and one for coordinators. The teachers for the practical part are generally Deaf, while the teachers of the theoretical part may also be hearing people.

            The involvement of ENS and the academic world plays a crucial role in the standardization of LIS, which is important to gain official recognition. An important project supporting standardization was developed in 2007: La Sapienza University of Rome, the University of Milan-Bicocca, and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice received a two-year grant (2008-2010), PRIN 2007: Dimensioni di variazione nella Lingua dei Segni Italiana (‘Dimensions of variation in Italian Sign Language’), for investigating linguistic variations in LIS. The project led to the creation of the first LIS Corpus (SOCIO-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 4.3). Indeed, the collection of a corpus is one of the most important tasks for language planning. It represents an attempt to improve the adequacy of form and structure of a language and to trace the source of variability. It is related to the issue of standardization processes and language documentation which are necessary to understand the developmental stages of a language. More specifically, the existence of a language corpus allows to account for the variability among signers due to many social factors, as their geographic and family origins, their age, gender, educational background, and so on. In particular, the LIS Corpus has detected a strong effect of age among signers: young LIS Deaf signers use more standardized forms than older signers (SOCIO-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 4.4). Although variation is a feature of all natural languages, the standardization process of a language has consequences for acquisition planning, in our specific case, it can facilitate the acquisition of LIS as a second language, reducing the communication obstacles caused by its great variability.

            Italian Universities also promote the visibility of LIS by organising workshops, meetings, national and international events. In 2004, the conference Verbal and Sign Languages, Comparing Structures, Constructs and Methodologies was held by the University of Rome-La Sapienza; in 2005 the conference Signa Volant was organised by the University of Milan-Bicocca; in 2011, 2014 and 2016 the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice co-organised the conference on Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory (FEAST), an international conference which focuses on formal and experimental approaches on sign languages. In order to increase foreign exchanges among Deaf people and Deaf communities, recently the Siena School of Liberal Arts introduced a Deaf studies program, which includes a semester where one class is taught in American sign language (ASL). A fundamental opportunity for Deaf people is represented by the Mason Perkins Deafness Fund (MPDF onlus), created in 1985, which provides scholarships for Italian Deaf students. The winners receive the opportunity to spend one academic year at the American Gallaudet University. The association also promotes the organisation of accessible cultural events and the creation of a national and international network of people who work in support of the Deaf community. Similarly, every year, the Fulbright-Roberto Wirth Fund Scholarship at Gallaudet University offers the opportunity to spend one academic year at Gallaudet University to Italian citizens. The winner can specialize in deafness studies supporting deaf or deafblind children research in Italy.

            In the last years, two European projects have been developed at academic level thanks to the collaboration of Universities. The first project: COST Action IS1006 (2011-2015) Sign Gram: Unraveling the grammars of European sign languages: pathways to full citizenship of deaf signers and to the protection of their linguistic heritage led to design the SignGram Blueprint, the first guide for sign language grammars. The chair of the Action was Prof. Josep Quer (Universitat Pompeu Fabra). Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Bicocca University of Milan and La Sapienza University of Rome were the national research groups involved in the project. The second European project is SIGN-HUB: preserving, researching and fostering the linguistic, historical and cultural heritage of European Deaf signing communities with an integral resource. It is a 4-year research project (2016-2020) funded by the European Commission within Horizon 2020 involving different European and non-European countries (Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Turkey, France, and Israel). The national universities involved in the project are: the University of Milan-Bicocca and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Aim of the project is the creation of an innovative and inclusive resource hub for the linguistic, historical and cultural documentation of the different sign languages, for supporting Deaf communities and for sign language evaluation on clinical and school frameworks. The SIGN-HUB project has developed a digital platform to host: i) a digital grammar of 6 sign languages (DGS, LIS, LSC, LSE, NGT, TID); ii) an interactive digital Atlas sharing the linguistic properties of sign languages; iii) the development of diagnostic tests for sign language assessment, and iv) the creation of a digital archive of older signers’ linguistic and cultural heritage.

            Another relevant issue for increasing the possibility of the official recognition of LIS consists in language planning. After several local experiments (SOCIO-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 2.4) an important attempt to set up a national plan for the education of deaf children was the project entitled Model of integrated special school services for Deaf individuals (MoSSSiS) presented to the Ministry of Education by the Italian Association of Educators of Deaf Children (AIES). The project aimed at offering an educational model which successfully integrates hearing and deaf children, involving a national centre of coordination and local branches. The national centre promotes specific training courses for educators and teachers of Deaf children, and provides teaching materials and relevant documentations on the education of deaf children. Often special needs teachers received general training for covering a broad variety of children with different impairments, but the issues related to deafness are not properly faced. Moreover, this project wants to create specific bilingual programs and a lifelong learning program which prevents Deaf adults to return to illiteracy.

            Evidence for a greater awareness on the importance of LIS comes from the increasing of professional roles and figures related to sign language: language teachers, interpreters, cultural mediators and educators (SOCIO-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 2.4). As for the professional training of sign language interpreters, there are two important associations in Italy: ANIOS and ANIMU. The former is mostly based in the northern part of Italy, and the latter more in the south. The competence of LIS interpreters has increased in the last few decades, but the interpretation from LIS to other sign or spoken languages (and from a foreign sign or spoken languages into LIS) still needs to be improved to ensure access for Deaf people to international scenarios. Cultural Mediators are professional figures who work in official situations such as the public administration, public security, social and welfare services, facilitating communication among Deaf and hearing adults. As for educators, they are facilitators who work in public schools within educational programs for deaf children, in order to support the integration between Deaf and hearing children. The improvement of the educational planning for Deaf people is crucial to assure them the possibility to have access to highly qualified professional jobs.