«Researching the Deaf Community» visiting HSE
Throughout March, classes of the «Researching the Deaf Community» club at the «GES-2» House of Culture were held at HSE on the basis of the International Laboratory for Social Integration Research.
Together with the curators of the circle, Nikita Bolshakov, a leading researcher at the IL SIR, and Vlad Kolesnikov, curator of programs for the deaf community at the House of Culture «GES-2», deaf, hard of hearing and hearing teenagers and young people immersed themselves in the world of Deaf Studies and sociological research methodology.
The first few classes, one of which was also attended by Yulia Shamsutdinova, a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University, were devoted to the development of tools for researching the media consumption practices of the deaf and hard of hearing. The result of the work was a questionnaire, a survey which will be launched very shortly.
In the second week, a discussion was held in the building on Pokrovka on the development of tools for assessing the level of literacy in sign language of deaf adolescents. In addition to the participants of the EDC circle Russian language teacher, MPGU teacher Lyudmila Zhadan, director of the Center for Education and Research of Sign Language, teacher Daria Semenova, and MSLU teacher Emma Kumurzhi took part in the discussion.
The discussion participants agreed that literacy in RSL includes knowledge of RSL grammar, the ability to formulate and express a thought, convey the essence of a story/text, knowledge of vocabulary, language norms, classifiers, the volume of gestures, the ability to correctly select gestures for a situation, the inclusion of facial expressions into the conversation, knowledge of synonymous gestures, “a sense of language”, at the same time also implies flexibility - the ability to switch between two languages - Russian verbal and Russian sign
Finally, the last two March classes were devoted to discussing the topic of relationships between representatives of the deaf community and sign language interpreters: the circle participants made presentations as part of the reading seminar and also began developing research tools - an interview guide and a questionnaire for a future survey.
Soon, the circle participants will begin a period of fieldwork and active data collection, and the research results will be presented at the conference «Researching the Deaf Community» on May 31 - June 2 this year, organized jointly by the «GES-2» House of Culture and our Laboratory.
