A Sociolinguistic Study of the Use of Indian Sign Language

This paper discusses the “Language Use” pattern of ISL by the deaf community. This paper aims to understand the vitality of sign language within the community and to foresee whether ISL is likely to be maintained in coming future. As proposed by Boehm (1997:67), “The choices people make in regard to language use reflect trend towards either language maintenance and language shift. To some extent, this reveals the vitality of the language. Fase et al. (1992:6) says that, “It has been commonly found that when the mother tongue of the minority language remains dominant in communication within the ethnic group, it can be said that mother tongue has been maintained.” This survey also deals with the major issue faced by the deaf community in this speech dominant society, which is huge “communication gap” with the majority speaking people of our society.


Introduction
Historically, the presence of deaf people has been mentioned and talked about in all human societies across time. Despite being a political, linguistic and a socially systemized SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH e-ISSN: 2582-3574 p-ISSN: 2582-4406 VOL. 8, ISSUE 3, MARCH 2020 www.ijellh.com 228 language, Sign language has emerged as a matter of research only in the middle of the last century. Deaf people have evolved as a community having their own cultural heritage and sign language is the verbal repertoire of the community. Sign language forms the identity of the community. This speech community is unique in its way. From the perspective of the deaf, deafness must be viewed as more than just a physical disability; it is a set of attitude and behavior. The common thing which they have in their mind for forming a community is the audiological condition and sense of common oppression faced by them in a speaking and hearing dominant society. Sense of having a community generates a linguistic and social empowerment of the deaf. It is the hard work of a group of people to achieve a common set of goals which makes them united and form a community. Deaf people unite to fight for their linguistic and social rights. The Deaf community is an open-ended community; it does not have religious boundaries such as caste, class, color and beliefs to attain its membership.
Membership to a Deaf community is not something which can be paternally passed to the next generation, it is a sense of understanding and experience of a person, and it has no biological connections.
William C. Stokoe (1960), enlightened the world with sign language and convinced the world that sign language is equal to spoken language or speech as a mode of communication exchange and cultural exchange. He argued that Sign language is a complete language in itself and it's just that there is a modality difference. Spoken language is articulated by mouth and perceived by our ears whereas sign language is articulated by hands and perceived by our eyes.
To sustain in a society, communication with other people is very important but deaf people in India face major communication gap. The communication gap begins from the family itself, for those of who are born in a hearing family often face this situation. As a result, often these children are aggressive because they cannot explain what they feel. For SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH e-ISSN: 2582-3574 p-ISSN: 2582-4406 VOL. 8, ISSUE 3, MARCH 2020 www.ijellh.com 229 acquiring any language, onset of that language and social conditions play a major role. All deaf children do not experience the same social conditions therefore every deaf have their own history and background. In many cases, a deaf child born with hearing parents does not learn sign language until they come in contact with other deaf, and this contact might take many years. In rural areas often onset of sign language is very late, unless they move to urban areas and meet deaf.
This paper is completely dedicated to find out the real situation of communication gap faced by the deaf community of India and check the vitality of ISL for the deaf community.
This study is important to find out the solution for this communication gap and set up language development programs for ISL.

Research Methodology
To give a clear picture of the use of language, a domain analysis method was employed. This paper is based on the survey held on language use in which thirty one deaf students and one staff of NDS (Noida Deaf Society); it is a nongovernment organization, participated. The language use pattern in nine domains are examined and analyzed respectively.
Participants were given close ended questions with multiple choice answers. The questionnaire consists of two parts. Each part has its own focus. The language used for forming questionnaire is English.
The aim of the first part of the questionnaire is to establish background information of the participants such as age, sex, mother tongue, educational background and occupation.
There are in total 12 questions, which initially help to understand the background of the participant. Part II of the questionnaire focuses on the use of Indian sign language in different domains. In this part, questions were based on the domains like family, friendship, school, 3.1 Domains analyzed for this study Fasold (1984:183) notes that the concept of Domain was first proposed by Fishman as a way of looking language choice. According to Fishman, domains are institutional contexts in which one language is preferred over another language. Domains have certain constellation of factors such as location, activity and participant.
In this study, nine domains were analyzed. These domains were determined by interlocutors, activities and settings, as shown below in the table.   Market: In the south-Asian language culture, it has been seen that language plays a vital role in socializing. People often buy things from those shopkeepers who speak the language of the speaker and often merchant are comfortable enough to sell their goods to mutual speakers.
We will discuss the use of ISL in market areas in the following section.  We will see language use in each domain respectively: Family: Language use in family domain is always investigated almost in every research like language maintenance, shift and vitality (Parasher 1980, Benjamans 1998  In the deaf community, a family in which a hearing child is born to a deaf parents then the child is called as CODA (Child of deaf adult). If a hearing child has a deaf sibling then that hearing child is called SODA (Sibling of deaf adult). CODAs and SODAs are native ISL signers. Initially, when there were only a few trained sign language interpreters then these CODA and SODA used to interpret for their family and community. This is how in the form of CODA and SODA sign language flows in the family and passed on to the next generation.
Development of gesture takes place when a deaf child is born to hearing parents. Hearing parents have no prior knowledge of sign language until they have a deaf child, so in order to make communication both develop a group of gestures and then parents learn ISL from their deaf child when they move out of the house and communicate with other deaf people.   Neighbor: In the research of language use, neighbors as a domain play a vital role for language learning and development. We often socialize with those neighbors who speak same language and also learn their language if they speak any other language. A child learns the local language while playing with their neighbor's kid.  84% respondents said that they use gestures while communicating with their neighbors. Only 16% which is quite expected, given the deaf families live in mixed neighborhood, and hearing population is not trained in ISL. use ISL. School: Of all domains, school is the most complex domain because participants from different class, caste, gender, language, culture, ability level and motivation comes in contact.
It forms a heterogeneous domain. The main participants of this domain are teachers and students. School is a domain which is very much committed to language management and development.
The first participant students vary in number of critical dimensions; such as age, gender, class and culture. Also they vary on the variety of language proficiency and the language beliefs they have learned from their home and neighborhood.
The second participant is teachers who are again vary on the basis of age, gender, class, training and language proficiency. There is a linguistic similarity and dissimilarity in this domain. It is full of linguistic and cultural diversity.  foreseeable future?", the answer is yes because it used in their major domains like family, association, school and friends.
From the unpredictable mixed group results, it is clear that deaf people face communication issues. There are no trained ISL interpreters and even government officials don't know how to tackle with deaf people. In these domains, there is a need of language development and promotion programs. ISL awareness is required at these domains.
Another interesting finding in this study of language use and language contact of deaf community is that they have no contact mass media like television and radio. 78% of informants reported that they do not understand anything on TV and they don't watch it. The reason they don't understand anything is the news or shows which comes on TV have no subtitles. It is difficult for them to understand it without the help of an interpreter. 97% think that there should be few shows on TV in ISL. Mass media plays a vital role in language development but the deaf community is devoid of this benefit.  Table   Title of Table  Page No.