Last September performance artist & Irish Sign Language interpreter Amanda Coogan spoke about what National recognition of ISL means to the Deaf Community.
[Text for excerpt below]
Amanda Coogan:
As I was saying ISL is not legally recognised here in Ireland, it is in many European countries, in America and in western developed world and even in the under developed world some countries in under developed world as well.
And more than and more than legal rights, access- information- in your preferred language as we might think the Irish Language act being debated in the North at the moment, how we use our first language Irish, here, it is much more fundamental in the Deaf community, it is much more fundamental, this ISL bill will allow them to go to the doctors and understand what the doctor is saying, to go to the bank and negotiate a mortgage to go to college and get access to tutors and lecturers and all these everyday things that if- because of your disability because of your lack of hearing it makes a big barrier to access these things without sign language interpreters.
So this bill is super, super important for bridging these gaps that this community needs bridging and also the kind of amazing recognition that they are here and that they are enriching members of society, this gorgeous, multiplicity, ways of being, that this is a community that you couldn’t kill by banning sign language in the 50’s, by not allowing deaf people to marry all these kind of eugenic ideas that they’ve had- they couldn’t kill the community-it’s still here- and in some ways, this bill, will be a becoming for that, it will radically shift Deaf people’s perception of themselves but bringing some kind of national legal recognition as a language that has refused to die because actually human beings need to communicate and for these people trying to speak, trying to lip read just failed-to a natural language that is completely accessible for them which is ISL it is a unique-it is indigenous to Ireland, Britain has a different sign language-France has a different sign language- America has a different sign language because languages grow in the communities that use them.
This is a beautifully pure language, it’s also linguistically gorgeous, it’s deliciously, it’s OTT ,over dramatic, reportage on the body, you have to be totally unashamed of anybody looking at you or your body, it really enriches Irish society, I would of course-advocate that-because it is my birth language-my first language but I don’t think I’m talking off the Richter scale there.
