Flanders
is the northern part of Belgium, a small
European country with about 10,000,000
inhabitants and 10 provinces. Flanders
consists of 5 provinces: Antwerp, East-Flanders,
Flemish-Brabant, Limburg and West-Flanders.
Since 1993 Belgium has been a federalized
monarchy with two larger states (Flanders
and Wallonia) and a small German-speaking
area in the east of the country. It has
three officially recognized languages:
Dutch (Flanders), French (Wallonia) and
German.
The
Dutch spoken in Flanders (in the past
sometimes referred to as Flemish) is the
same as the Dutch used by people in the
Netherlands. Differences include mostly
pronunciation and – to a much lesser
extent – lexicon and grammar, comparable
to the differences between American English
and British English, for instance.
As
is the case in many other countries, the
education of Belgian Deaf people has been
strongly influenced by the decisions made
at the ‘famous’ 1880 Milan
Conference. There a gathering of European
and American educators decided that the
d/Deaf should be educated orally and signs
banned from their classrooms. All Flemish
Deaf schools – of which most were
founded before 1883 – officially
followed this Oralistic doctrine until
1980. This negative attitude towards sign
language did not cause sign languages
to disappear, however. On Flemish playgrounds
too, the children continued to use signs
amongst themselves. At the beginning of
the century every Flemish province had
a Deaf school. Some even had two: one
for girls and one for boys. Since all
schools were residential, implying that
the students only went home for the holidays
or – later on – weekends,
regional sign language variants started
to develop at each school. The regions
in which these variants were (and are)
used more or less coincide with the Flemish
provinces. At the moment, there are five
such variants. Flanders does not have
a standardized sign language. A process
of spontaneous standardization is going
on though, as Deaf people from the different
regions are increasingly having contact
in school, when going to joint activities,
conferences, etc (De Weerdt et al., 2003).
Today,
most Deaf schools still use the oral method
to educate their pupils, although the
attitude towards the use of signs has
changed. One school has implemented bilingual/bicultural
education and several other ones show
interest in this form of education. Some
students also attend ‘hearing’
schools assisted by a sign language interpreter,
but the number of interpreted hours these
students are entitled to is extremely
low. Flemish Sign Language thus still
is not used as a/the language of education,
something most sign language researchers
and a large part of the Flemish Deaf Community
would very much like to see happening.
The
division of Belgium into two states has
also influenced and continues to influence
the sign language used by the Flemish
Deaf. Today, every Belgian – including
those who are d/Deaf – either belongs
to the Flemish or the Walloon language
community. So every Deaf person in Belgium
is considered to ‘use’ either
Dutch or French, depending on where they
are born/live and regardless of the sign
language they use. This categorization
is important as it determines what school
a d/Deaf child goes to or whether it is
entitled to the use of a free hearing
aid or the assistance of a sign language
interpreter. In the seventies the national
Deaf federation NAVEKADOS (NAtionale VEreniging
van KAtholieke Doof-Stommen – National
Society of the Catholic Deaf-Mutes) had
already split into FEVLADO (Federatie
van VLAamse DovenOrganisaties –
Association of the Flemish Deaf Organizations)
and FFSB (Fédération Francophone
des Sourds de Belgique – French
Association of the Belgian Deaf). Since
this separation, all kinds of activities
have been organized separately, and subsidies
have been received from different sources.
Consequently, contact between the Flemish
and Walloon Deaf people has reduced, causing
their respective sign languages to develop
separately and deviate further from each
other (Van Herreweghe 2002). In addition,
the LSFB (Langue des Signes de Belgique
Francophone – Belgian French-Speaking
Sign Language) was recently officially
recognized as the first language of the
Walloon Deaf people. This is still not
the case for Flemish Sign Language.
So
far, I have always talked about the Flemish
Deaf community – consisting of approximately
6,000 sign language users (Loots et al,
2003) – using Flemish Sign
Language. Up until fifteen years ago,
however, the community used the term ‘Belgian
Sign Language’, because the researchers
believed there were more resemblances
between the two sign languages used in
Flanders and Wallonia than between those
used in Flanders and the Netherlands.
A few years ago, the name changed. Because
of the lack of sufficient linguistic evidence
that would enable us to speak of two completely
different sign languages, the compromise
‘Flemish Belgian Sign Language’
was chosen to refer to the variant used
in Flanders. However, because of the split
of NAVEKADOS, reduced contact between
the Flemish and Walloon Deaf and the different
processes of standardization, the Deaf
got more and more dissatisfied with the
term ‘Flemish Belgian’ and
wanted to change it into ‘Flemish’.
FEVLADO also advocated this change at
an Annual General Meeting in October 2000.
Since I wish to respect the opinion of
the Flemish Deaf organizations, I will
use the term ‘Flemish Sign Language’
in the remainder of this paper, abbreviated
to VGT (Vlaamse Gebarentaal).
Katrien
Van Mulders
katrien_vanmulders@yahoo.com
References
De
Weerdt, K., E. Vanhecke, M. Van Herreweghe
and M. Vermeerbergen
2001
“De Vlaamse Gebarentaal: dialecten
en standaardisering” (“Flemish
Sign Language: dialects and standardisation”).
Lecture
held at the congress “Gebarentaal
in Vlaanderen”, 12-13 oktober 2001,
Ghent University.
Van
Herreweghe, M.
2002
"Turn-taking mechanisms and Active
Participation in Meetings with Deaf and
Hearing Participants in Flanders".
In
C. Lucas (ed), Turn-taking, Fingerspelling
and Contact in Signed Languages. Washington,
DC: Gallaudet Univ. Press.
Loots,
G., I. Devise, G. Lichtert, N. Hoebrechts,
C. Van De Ginste and I. De Bruyne
2003
De Gemeenschap van doven en slechthorenden
in Vlaanderen. Communicatie, taal en verwachtingen
omtrent maatschappelijke toegankelijkheid.
(The Community of deaf and hard-of-hearing
people in Flanders. Communication, language
and expectations concerning societal accessibility.)
Gent:
vzw Cultuur voor Doven.
