Inaugural lectures are a landmark in academic life, held on the appointment of new professorships. Professor Schembri presented in BSL (with BSL/English interpretation) about his work at the University of Birmingham on 14 March 2024.
It is now over sixty years since sign language linguistics emerged as a field of study within the language sciences. In this presentation, I explore some of our studies of Auslan and British Sign Language (the historically related majority sign languages of Australia and the UK respectively), all of which have attempted to build on the finding that sign languages are natural languages by asking the question: what kind of languages are they? How much does their structure resemble, and how much does it differ from, spoken languages? How has the social structure of signing communities influenced their structure and use? And what can sign languages teach us about the very nature of human language? Importantly too, what benefits can research on these questions have for the linguistic human rights of deaf communities?
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Professor Schembri writes:
One thing I'd like to acknowledge here: I show a slide with the faces of many of the deaf and hearing researchers who have had the biggest impact on my work over the last 30 years. I wanted to include this slide to acknowledge the many people who have made my work possible. I am so very grateful to all of you.
All of these people are white Australians, Americans, and British people. This slide reveals the structural racism which means Auslan and BSL research has not included many Indigenous, Black, and Asian researchers in the past. This is changing - I am now working with a larger and more diverse team of deaf and hearing people, including researchers who are Black or south Asian, but this slide was about thanking key figures in my past work.
I want to acknowledge here the criticism from Black Deaf UK about this slide, and commit to ensuring more opportunities for Australian and British Black and Asian researchers now and in the future.