230 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
and access to HIV/AIDS information in South Africa. We built on the content of
the WFD training, continuing the dialogue on language awareness and community
development that had started one year earlier (De Clerck, 2012d; Lutalo-Kiingi,
2012b) using the same critical pedagogical approach, which I had also exploited
during my research (De Clerck, 2011, 2012b; also see Chapter 5).
Although group meetings had not taken place in the meantime, the reflection
had continued, and long-term learning effects were evident (Lutalo-Kiingi & De
Clerck, 2012). For example, during the workshop, community members explored
the phonology of CSL, applying and deepening concepts from the previous train-
ing. They discussed various indigenous signs associated with women, and the female
participants asserted that they should be involved in discussions on gender-related
sign preferences. In spontaneous conversations, participants who had used an LSF-
based variant of CSL in the WFD training now openly code-switched to a more
indigenous variant. All of this suggests that their empowerment and meta-linguistic
awareness had increased impressively, from a state of never having discussed lan-
guage at all, to confidently contributing to explorations of specific lexical choices.
The four aforementioned stages in Uganda’s capacity-building process were
presented in the talk “From Seed to Fruit” (Lutalo-Kiingi & Bergmann, 2012). They
were represented visually using the roots, trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit of a tree,
and this sparked a lively discussion about what needed to be done in Cameroon, with
vigorous use of CSL and assertions that the community should have ownership of its
development. Their emerging critical awareness had changed their linguistic perspec-
tives, and they questioned the longstanding view that CSL is, depending on the loca-
tion, a variant of ASL or LSF (see Chapter 5 for a discussion of this). Now they seemed
to better understand regional variation and the impact of Western sign languages.
Documentation may help efforts toward official recognition and insight into CSL
variation, although extra-linguistic factors, such as local beliefs about citizenship,
autochthony, language ideologies, and boundary marking (e.g., distinguishing the
gestural communication of “chickens,” as explained below, from the signing of deaf
adults who had been able to attend formal education; also see Chapter 5)^6 are likely
to determine whether CSL receives recognition as a national sign language with
regional variations or is characterized as two or more different sign languages (see
Reagan, 2010, on comparable variation in South African Sign Language; also see
Lutalo-Kiingi & De Clerck, 2015c).
Inspired by the Ugandan example, perhaps the most prevalent question was
about a community agreement on development priorities. Capacity building of
CANAD is complicated, although consensus on educational needs may be in reach.
These needs would likely include convincing the government to pay teachers in
deaf schools, even as the organization of these schools remains private; publishing
a sign language dictionary; training sign language teachers; and generating teach-
ing materials. The participants also mentioned CANAD’s adoption of an official- For an in-depth discussion of citizenship and autochthony in Cameroon, I refer to peter Ges-
chiere’s (2009) book Perils of Belonging. Autochthony, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Africa and Europe.