Hearing-impaired Wits student excels

DEAF student Nyeleti Nokwazi, pictured, from Wits University, was due to graduate today with a Master of Arts degree, being the first student using South African sign language (SASL) as her first language throughout her research.

Using filmed SASL to report on her dissertation, her focus investigates the borrowing of lexical items within South African sign language.

The aim of her study is to find the extent of lexical borrowing from Irish, British and American sign language.

Nokwazi’s dissertation, titled “An investigation of lexical borrowing in the South African sign language lexicon”, was jointly supervised in the SASL and linguistics departments.

When Wits’s sign language department began offering postgraduate degrees in 2013, Nokwazi was one of four students admitted into the programme.

The degree, which was partially funded by the Department of Arts and Culture through a bursary programme for studies in marginalised South African languages, afforded Nokwazi the opportunity to complete her honours degree before registering for her master’s in 2014.

Supervisor Dr Ruth Morgan said the education sector was in need of Nokwazi’s expertise. “This is a great step forward in decolonising the university and creating a multilingual platform for research reporting.

“Although the SASL is not yet an official 12th language in South Africa, it is considered official for education purposes, and is constitutionally protected as a language to be developed,” said Morgan.

Nokwazi said she intends to study for a postgraduate certificate in education.