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The Emergence of Signs in Interaction: Shared Homesign Systems in Nebaj, Guatemala

Laura Horton, PhD Candidate, Comparative Human Development and Linguistics

As I make my way down the precipitously steep hill from the parque central towards the Xolacul neighborhood, I am grateful that the municipial government of Nebaj has seen fit to extend the concrete pavement this far. I jump out of the street, over the deep gutter, to avoid the tuk-tuks that race around a large truck unloading cases of Guatemala’s signature beer, “El Gallo,” at a local cantina. I hurry on, past where the pavement ends, to a deeply rutted gravel and dirt street up the hill and further away from the center of town.

I pass tiendas and tortilleras, opening up for business, as kids make their way to school in matching uniforms. I arrive at La Escuela Oficial para Educacion Especiál de Nebaj (EOEE), the local school for special education, around 8:30. The early-arriving students are sweeping up the courtyard and classrooms, sprinkling water on the covered porch to keep the dust down, and picking up trash from the road in front of the school. Older students lean on the front gate, catching up on yesterday’s news—their hands waving and pointing and gesturing fluidly, occasionally punctuated by headshakes, pushing, shoving and chasing. These students are deaf, and while some have deaf relatives at home, others only interact with other deaf people when they are at school, with other deaf peers.

The school enrolls students from the age of three with a wide range of disabilities including physical handicaps, learning disabilities and Downs syndrome. There are also 5–8 deaf students who attend, depending on the year. None of the deaf students at the school has enough residual hearing to learn Ixhil, the Mayan language spoken in the community, or Spanish, the language children learn when they begin attending school. None of the teachers at the school knows LENSEGUA, the official sign language of Guatemala, used primarily in Guatemala City, nine hours south of Nebaj.

The deaf students thus invent their own gestural systems to communicate—with their hearing family members, with their teachers and with each other. These gestural systems, called homesign systems 1 , have been studied in many countries around the world where, like Nebaj, there are deaf children and adults who cannot hear the spoken language in their environment, and who are not part of a community that uses a national sign language 2. These studies have established that homesign systems created by individual deaf children and adults are often internally consistent and share many properties with established languages 3. When individual deaf homesigners are brought together in a community or institutional setting, like a school, they can converge on a shared sign language within a few age-cohort “generations.” The daily contact between homesigners, combined with transmission of the manual communication system to a new age-cohort generation of deaf children who enter into the community, gives rise to a new sign language, significantly insulated from contact with the surrounding spoken language(s) 4.

After school finishes for the day, I go to Ana and Emilio’s house to try a new elicitation task with them. I arrive with my video cameras, tripod and backpack full of toys and books. I chat briefly with their mom, who is headed out to the market, and then set up the cameras opposite to three plastic chairs dragged out onto the covered porch from inside the house. Ana sits at a table across from Emilio with a book of photos of familiar objects and places, including animals, vehicles, tools and food. Emilio sits next to his younger brother, Marco, who is hearing. They are facing Ana and Emilio holds a paper with a grid of 16 pictures. Ana describes each photo to Emilio and he then tries to select the correct picture from his array of photos.

This game helps me document and understand Ana and Emilio’s homesign systems in two ways. First, I am recording the signs that Ana uses to describe everyday things in her world. I will take this data back to Chicago and code it for features like handshape and movement to understand how his signs are similar or different from other homesigners in Nebaj, as well as other established and emergent sign languages like American Sign Language (ASL) or Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL). Second, this “matcher” task allows me to observe Ana and Emilio interacting with each other, to observe how they resolve miscommunications and negotiate their homesign systems when there is confusion.

Ana turns to a page with a photo of a horse. She uses a gesture that many hearing people employ when talking about animals across Latin America, a flat hand extended from her body, with the palm facing inwards. She then gestures with her hands at her shoulders, a common description of a person or animal carrying a heavy load. Emilio looks up from the array, having missed this sequence, and Ana repeats only the carry gesture. Emilio points out a photo of a pile of firewood, often carried in the way that Ana demonstrated. She looks down, indicating that he has not selected the correct photo based on her description so he searches the array again. His little brother Marco taps him on the shoulder and gestures to indicate large ears, similar to a horse, then waves his hand in front of his mouth, a common gestural emblem to mean “eating” used by both hearing people and the deaf homesigners in Nebaj. Emilio looks back at the array of photos and points out a photo of a dog. Ana, frustrated, turns her book around to show Emilio the photo of the horse. He finds the matching picture in his array and points to it repeatedly.

This missed communicative exchange is interesting to me for a lot of reasons, not least because Ana had trouble picking out the same photo of a horse from the same array, moments earlier when Emilio was the one describing the photos to her. It may seem surprising that these siblings, the only two deaf children in a family of eight, do not share the same sign for an animal that they see every day in the roads and fields around their home. It is possible that, had Emilio seen Ana make the animal gesture before the carry gesture, he could have selected the correct photo from his array. It is also interesting that, when Emilio did not select the correct photo on the first try, Marco, his brother who is not deaf, recognizes the structure of the task and the fact that he must sign to Emilio to communicate a piece of missing information to him. Even when Marco supplies the information that Emilio missed when Ana described the horse the first time (that it was an animal and that it was eating) Emilio chooses a different animal from the array. Ana does not attempt to clarify for Emilio, instead showing him her photo of the horse after he has incorrectly chosen photos of firewood and a dog.

View of one of the main roads through Nebaj, Guatemala

This brief interaction illustrates the fragility and contingent nature of communication for homesigners in Nebaj. They navigate their world trying to communicate with a variety of people who do not share their modality of communicating (visual-manual homesign versus oral-aural spoken language), much less their particular communicative system. Sometimes, it seems that even a sibling who is also deaf, and also a homesigner, does not automatically entail comprehension between homesigners. The question I seek to answer with my data is how these kinds of interaction, between siblings who are both homesigners, between siblings who are deaf and hearing, between homesigning children and their homesigning parents, and between homesigning peers at school, affect the structure and stability of emergent communication systems.

The front gate of the Escuela Oficial para Educación Especial (Official School for Special Education, Nebaj)

Students play a game in the courtyard of the Official School for Special Education, Nebaj, Guatemala



Coppola, M. & Newport, E. (2005). Grammatical Subjects in home sign: Abstract linguistic structure in adult primary gesture systems without linguistic input. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(52), 19249-19253.

Frishberg, N. (1987). Home sign. In J. Van Cleve (ed.), Gallaudet encyclopedia of deaf people and deafness (Vol. 3) New York: McGraw Hill. 128–131.

Goldin-Meadow, S. (2003). The resilience of language: What gesture creation in deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language. New York, N.Y.: Psychology Press.

Goldin-Meadow, S., Özyürek, A., Sancar, B., & Mylander, C. (2009). Making language around the globe: A cross-linguistic study of homesign in the United States, China, and Turkey. In J. Guo, E. Lieven, N. Budwig & S. Ervin-Tripp (eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin. N.Y.: Taylor & Francis, 27-39.

Kegl, J., Senghas, A., Coppola, M. (1999) Creation through contact: Sign language emergence and sign language change in Nicaragua. In M. DeGraff (ed.), Language creation and language change: Creolization diachrony, and development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 179–237.


Polich, L. (2005). The Emergence of the deaf community in Nicaragua: “With sign language you can learn so much.” Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.

Senghas, R., Senghas, A., & Pyers, J. (2004). The emergence of Nicaraguan Sign Language: Questions of development, acquisition, and evolution. In S. T. Parker, J. Langer, & C. Milbrath (Eds.), Biology and Knowledge revisited: From neurogenesis to psychogenesis. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 287-306.



  1. Frishberg (1987); Goldin-Meadow (2003)
  2. Researchers distinguish “national” sign languages from local, village, and indigenous sign languages based on the number of users, the length of time the language has been in use, and the resources (use in schools, access to interpreting services) available to signers who use the language. In some communities, for example, there is a high prevalence of hereditary deafness and both hearing and deaf individuals are thus exposed to a shared sign language; these systems are often referred to as “village” sign languages
  3. Goldin-Meadow et al (2009); Coppola & Newport (2005)
  4. A recent example is Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), a sign language that started just 50 years ago with the first state-supported schools for special education in Managua. NSL has been extensively documented: Kegl & Iwata (1985); Senghas, Senghas & Pyers (2004); Polich (2005)

The Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen: Haiti’s Language Receives New Prominence

Mollie McFee, PhD Candidate, Comparative Literature

When I began taking Haitian Creole[1] in my second year of graduate school at the University of Chicago, one of the first proverbs I learned was “Pale franse pa di lespri.” The language is rich in word play exemplified by its proverbs, pithy encapsulations of social truths used to tease, admonish, or celebrate the listener. This particular phrase condenses Haiti’s social and political history into a curt utterance. It means, “Speaking French doesn’t make you smart.” Ever since Haiti’s formal independence from France in 1805, French has been the dominant language of the government, business, and the intellectual elite. However, most linguists estimate that only 5–10% of Haitians speak fluent French. Haitian Creole, on the other hand, is spoken and understood by all Haitians. The proverb serves as a reminder that though French has served as a gatekeeper to social mobility in Haiti, the language itself is only a system of symbols. True intelligence is in the content. To me, the proverb exemplifies Haiti’s remarkable history. When Haiti’s French colonizers failed to live up to the revolutionary ideals of equality by ensuring the freedom of slaves in its colony, the Haitian revolutionaries fought for those radical ideals despite a lack of resources or a trained army. I always interpreted the proverb as a reminder that the marginalized can outwit and outfight the elite, and that words are meaningless without action.

The Haitian army’s victory over its French colonizer did not end French culture’s dominant role in Haitian life. Despite the fact that only the very privileged and educated few spoke French, government affairs and services were conducted in the language of the former colonizer. The effects of this linguistic divide are staggering. Haitian children have been expected to learn in a foreign tongue, making education an enormous challenge. Adults, too, have not had access to politicians’ speeches, court proceedings, or virtually any of the fundamental tools for participation in democratic life. Over the past forty years the Haitian government has passed significant legislation addressing this problem. In 1979, the Reform Bernard required schools to provide students with education in Haitian Creole. In 1987, after the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was removed from power in a popular revolution, the country approved a new constitution that, for the first time in Haitian history, declared Haitian Creole one of the country’s two official languages (the second being French).

Even these major policy decisions have not significantly advanced the role of Haitian Creole in public life. Recently, the Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen (AKA), or the Haitian Creole Academy, was formed to take on the mantle of remedying the immediate problems and deep social history of Haiti’s linguistic divide. My current research centers on the efforts of this institution. When the 1987 constitution declared Haitian Creole one of the country’s official languages, it also called for the creation of an Academy to ensure “li bay lang Kreyòl la jarèt pou li fikse epi pou li ba li tout mwayen lasyans pou li devlope nòmal.” [it supports the Haitian language by codifying it and giving it all manner of scientific support so that it might become standardized.][2] The Haitian parliament and president approved legislation to establish the AKA in 2014. The AKA nominally resembles the French language academy, the Académie Française (AF), but the AKA’s mission and social context differs significantly from this French antecedent. Founded in 1635, the AF has been the official arbiter of the French language. The AF symbolically recognizes the most refined use of the French language by publishing a well-respected dictionary and awarding literary prizes. In its early days, the AF helped standardize French and establish its status in public life as Latin became increasingly less dominant. When I first learned of the Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen’s existence, I was shocked that Haiti had implemented this eminently staid model from its former colonizer. Didn’t Haitian Creole embody the spirit of the maroon, the escaped slave that carved out new forms of life on the margins to resist European hegemony? How was it that a language I associated with creativity, play, and subversive resistance of authority was now to be subject to an official and regulating body?

As I dove into my research on the extremely young organization, its unique role in Haitian society became clearer to me. While the AF served to reinforce the French government’s power at home and abroad by establishing linguistic and literary prestige, the AKA endeavors to use language as a tool to ensure that the Haitian state serves its people. Regulating the language is instrumental to this process. Establishing rules that settle a diversity of linguistic practices, for instance the notation of abbreviated words, makes it easier for people to write, read, and teach in Haitian Creole. The AKA also works in collaboration with the government to ensure that laws on the books for decades like the Reform Bernard actually get carried out. The AKA currently works with the Ministry of Education and Professional Development (MENFP) to promote pedagogical training for educators to teach in Haitian Creole. Rather than focusing on the forms that symbolize intelligence, like literary prizes, the AKA turned its attention to cultivating the minds of Haitians in their native language, reinforcing what all Haitians know: Pale franse pa di lespri.


The Akademi's official logo is an image of the Nèg Mawon with a pen in his hand, signifiying the Akademi's commitment to cultivating cultural practices that will preserve Haiti's history and empower its people.

The Akademi’s official logo is an image of the Nèg Mawon with a pen in his hand, signifiying the Akademi’s commitment to cultivating cultural practices that will preserve Haiti’s history and empower its people.

 recent photograph of the Akademi's members, including prominent linguists, social activists, and cultural figures.

A recent photograph of the Akademi’s members, including prominent linguists, social activists, and cultural figures.


(1) I have chosen to write Haitian Creole in its English orthography here. I frequently see “Creole” written in its Haitian orthography (Kreyòl), which to me is akin to referring to French as français in an English language text. Some linguists argue that Haitian Creole should simply be called Haitian, as it is the language of Haiti.

(2) Atik 213, Konstitisyon Repiblik Ayiti 1987.

