"Native Signer" is Too Narrowly Defined 

Who "counts" as a "native signer"?

You might think that it means “a deaf person who learned sign language from their parents since birth”.

But, 95% of deaf people have hearing parents, which means that only 5% are likely to learn sign language from birth.

The problem

This idea of “native” excludes the majority of signers, and:

• It suggests that most signers are “not good enough” — even if they sign fluently everyday to everyone.

• It doesn’t match up with who signers think is “native”.

• It is overly linked to white signers from a few places. (What about Black ASL or Southern US signers?)

• It means most signers are left out of research.

Also, who gets labeled as “native” isn’t consistent at all. For example: 

• Are deaf signers with signing older siblings  “native”, “near-native” or “early signers”? 

• Should we compare deaf signers to hearing signers?

What can we do instead?

Let’s rethink the concept of “native signers” to make research more equitable and inclusive for all. 

Some actions we can take are to:

• Ask more inclusive research questions

• Avoid making broad generalizations

• Expand and diversify research recruitment, and

• Recruit deaf participants who identify themselves differently.

Source

• Hou, Lina (2024). Interrogating deaf “native” signer ideologies in linguistics research. Keynote presented at the 1st ROLE Symposium.