Mitigating institutional attitudes toward sign languages: A model for language vitality surveys

Abstract

This paper is about attitudes toward sign languages. The paper presents an idea to help make sign language surveys better in the future. In 2018, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) published a sign language survey and a spoken language survey together for the first time. This was very important to show that spoken languages and signed languages are equal. But the sign language survey has some weaknesses. The idea presented in this paper says that: when people make sign language surveys, they should be aware of discrimination and negative attitudes; they should give signers access to the survey in sign language; and they should help signers decide what actions they can do to protect their sign language.