Event

The ASL Program in the Department of Linguistics is pleased to announce the Fall 2024 ASL Lecture Series event to be presented by Dr. Kristin Snoddon, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director with the School of Early Childhood Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada.

Dr. Snoddon’s presentation is titled “Brokering Understanding: Deaf Interpreters’ Role and Practice.” The abstract and bio are detailed below and a flier is attached. 

The lecture will be held on Thursday, October 10, from 5:30-7:00 PM as an in-person only event at the University of Pennsylvania, Meyerson Hall, B-1, 210 South 34th Street, Philadelphia.  

The lecture will be presented in ASL with ASL/English interpretation provided.  It is free and open to the public.  No registration is required to attend.

If you have questions, please contact Dr. Jami Fisher, Director of ASL, Department of Linguistics: jami@sas.upenn.edu

Abstract:

This presentation reports findings from semi-structured interviews with twelve Canadian deaf interpreter (DI) participants as part of a three-year study of language ideologies related to DIs. DIs are professional or amateur sign language interpreters and translators who are deaf and who may often but not always work as part of a team with hearing interpreters. When working with a hearing interpreter who uses the same national sign language, the DI’s role is often seen as meeting the needs of deaf clients who are viewed as lacking proficiency in a named language and/or who are viewed as monolingual in a named national sign language. This reflects normative language ideologies and conceptions of interpreting and translation. DI participants described their role in terms of their enhanced powers of understanding that elicited greater information from other deaf individuals than was apparent to a hearing interpreter. In addition, DI participants characterized their work as primarily translation, in a manner that accords with translation as the creation of meaning and as translanguaging that extends beyond named languages and deploys the individual’s full semiotic repertoire. The first part of this presentation provides further background information about DIs in Canada, intralingual interpreting, and understanding. Following this, I provide more information about the study, then report and discuss findings related to how DIs broker understanding.

Bio:

Kristin Snoddon, Ph.D is a deaf scholar and Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director with the School of Early Childhood Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. Her research and professional experience include collaborative work with deaf communities in developing sign language and early literacy programming for young deaf children and their parents. Her longstanding program of research has focused on developing a parent American Sign Language curriculum that is aligned with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Additionally, she analyzes policy issues related to inclusive education, sign language rights, and acquisition planning for ASL. Her current research focuses on sign language ideologies and ideologies of understanding.