Date:
Location:
"Not Modern Enough: Lexical Anxieties over Jordanian Sign Language (LIU)"
Speaker:
Timothy Loh, PhD Candidate, History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Contact:
Laura Flynn
lauraflynn@hks.harvard.edu
Abstract:
In this talk, I focus on a project at a government advocacy body for disabled Jordanians I was involved in as a participant-observer to assess the current state of sign language and deaf education in Jordan. Even as this government entity insisted that deaf Jordanians should have access to Jordanian Sign Language (LIU, from the Arabic lughat al- 'ishara al-'urduniyyah), one of the concerns foregrounded in the project was that LIU did not contain sufficient technical and scientific vocabulary to be the language of instruction in Jordanian deaf schools. Such anxieties over the state of LIU—whether, as my interlocutors expressed, it had sufficient capacity to “meet the needs” of the Jordanian deaf community today—reflect a preoccupation with Jordan's position in the "modern" world and the place of disabled Jordanians within it. I use this case to think about one way in which language might play a role in contemporary scientific and technological projects.
Bio:
Timothy Y. Loh is an anthropologist of science and technology, and a PhD candidate in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Drawing on medical anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and the social study of science, his ethnographic research examines sociality, language, and religion in deaf and signing worlds spanning Jordan, Singapore, and the United States. He is currently completing his dissertation, which examines how deaf Jordanians are engaging with new assistive technologies that have emerged in Amman in the last few decades, including cochlear implants and sign language-centered mobile applications. His research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the American Center for Research (ACOR) Jordan, and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, among others, and his writing has appeared in such outlets as Medical Anthropology, SAPIENS Magazine, and Somatosphere.
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