Constitution recognises promoting sign language as a noble cause

South African Sign Language (SASL) is the smallest recognised language in SA. Some deaf organisations claim more than one million South Africans use this language. The 2011 census survey records only 234,655 citizens who use SASL as “first spoken language”.

As such, SASL ends up as a language of more or less the same order of magnitude as Ndebele (1,090,223 speakers), Swati (1,297,046 speakers) and Venda (1 209 388 speakers). In other words, within the group of “smaller” South African languages.

Unfortunately, the census survey does not yet list this language group separately, despite the constitution’s recognition in this regard.

The question whether it is important to promote SASL therefore also has implications for SA’S other smaller languages. However, our constitution does not draw any distinction between recognised South African languages in terms of size, but rather follows an egalitarian approach by envisaging the promotion of the recognised languages, regardless of their size.

Section 6 of the constitution specifically entrusts the Pansouth African Language Board (PANSLB), a statutory body, with this responsibility by requiring of the council to promote the eleven official languages, the Non-bantu Click Languages (including Nama) as well as “sign language [sic]” (by implication SASL) and at the same time create conditions for their development and use.

From a language planning point of view, this is already a particularly ambitious assignment, but in addition one that is assigned to a statutory body; institutions about which there is a healthy degree of cynicism in SA given their dubious performance since 1994.

According to Harald Haarmann, a leading language sociologist, the ideal typology of language cultivation and language planning provides that governmental and statutory institutions be relatively more effective with language promotion in terms of organisational impact than non-governmental and non-statutory institutions such as pressure groups, language organisations and individuals.

Effectiveness in this typology rests on a well-worked language plan that is indeed implemented. Where such institutions fall short, it goes without saying that non-governmental and non-statutory institutions will have to step in to save the day.

In the light of PANSLB’S constitutional mandate, the opening question whether it is important to promote SASL (and in this respect also the other listed languages) is in fact irrelevant. This is important, because the constitution requires it; it is that simple. One should therefore rather ask why the constitution considers the promotion of the three mentioned groups of languages important.

As a starting point, it will help to keep in mind that the constitution links language promotion to language development and language use (in this case not how the language is used, but that the language is used, ie language use distribution). In language planning terms, language development refers, among other things, to the development and standardisation of the language corpus and language code.

Language distribution refers to how the language literally spreads through increasing use by the community within different contexts. Teaching also plays an important role in this

— is the language taught as a subject? There is therefore clearly a complicated relationship between language development and language use distribution — the more different people within different contexts, the more that language develops, use the designated language and the more it develops, the more people will want to use it in a variety of contexts.

One way of trying to answer, why the constitution considers the promotion of, among others, a language such as SASL important, is to look at the individual language rights that the constitution grants, as contained in Chapter 2 of the constitution, the Bill of Rights. Some of the more striking individual language rights come to the fore: ■ Section 29 of the Bill of Rights guarantees the right of education in the official language(s) of your choice. Though SASL is not (yet) an official language in SA, the South African Schools Act stipulates that the language is regarded as an official language for the purposes of learning in a public school. Obviously, this provision therefore requires that SASL be developed for teaching purposes and that such development be promoted. The institutionalisation of SASL as home language within the socalled CAPS system since 2014 is an obvious example of the effective promotion of the language by both a government body, in this case the department of basic education, and a statutory body, Umalusi, the Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training. However, to promote the use of SASL, the language should now also be taught as an additional language;

■ Sections 30 and 31 of the Bill of Rights guarantee the cultural rights of the use of the language of your choice within the community and organisations of your choice ... .. ;

■ Section 35(3)(k) of the Bill of Rights guarantees a court hearing in a language that the accused understands or, where this is not possible, to have the proceedings interpreted in that language.

Now that SA’S chief justice has proclaimed English as the record language of courts, the first part of the provision largely falls away. A dignified interpreting service requires welltrained SASL interpreters with appropriate language skills; and

■ Section 35(4) of the Bill of Rights guarantees information to an arrested, detained and accused person in a language that the person understands. Given the current state of SA’S police service, one can only imagine how difficult it is to exercise this right, hence Pansalb’s SASL Charter also envisages extensive promotion actions in this regard.

From this factual overview we note why the South African constitution writers consider the promotion of SASL to be important. The promotion of SASL is therefore important, because it serves a noble cause.

The constitution links language promotion to language development and language use