Do you see what I see?: Qualitative study of perceived accents in Deaf and hearing ASL users

Abstract

This study explores how accents manifest in Deaf and hearing sign language populations, and how these accents are perceived by both native and second language (L2) American Sign Language (ASL) users. Although accents have been central in spoken language research, accents in sign languages remain a developing field. For signers who know or are exposed to more than one sign language, signing may show evidence of language contact, such as handshape differences (Quinto-Pozos, 2008) and lexical borrowing (Sandler et al., 2020). Another type of accent concerns the stylistic choices and grammatical features observed in hearing populations who learned sign language (modality2/M2) as their L2. Hearing M2L2 signers often show extraneous ‘mouthing’ during signing (Schönström & Holmström, 2022) and have been argued to lack a cultural frame (McDermid, 2014). The current study extends this work, investigating how signed accents are perceived. Interviews with both Deaf (n=5) and hearing (n=7) signers were conducted and analyzed for qualitative patterns. Both the Deaf and hearing participants were able to identify accent patterns in M1L2 populations, however only the Deaf were able to correlate the patterns to specific language communities. The comments for the M2L2 groups were largely divided by hearing status: the Deaf participants commented more on prosody, direct address, NMMs and cultural frame – the more visual aspects sign language, whereas the hearing participants’ comments tended to focus on grammar and syntax.