Sweden
National Sign Language
Svenskt teckenspråk, STS
In English: Swedish Sign Language
Language Status: 4 (Educational). Recognized language (2009, Languages Act, Article 9).
Legal Recognition
"Sign Language Legislation in the European Union", Wheatley, M., A. Pabsch., Edition II. Brussels, EUD, 2012:
"Swedish Sign Language is mentioned in the Language Act (Språklag) which contains provisions on Swedish, the national minority languages, and Swedish Sign language. Section 9 states:
"The public sector has a particular responsibility to protect and promote Swedish Sign Language."
Section 14 states that Deaf people have to be given the opportunity to "learn, develop, and use Swedish Sign Language".
Swedish Sign Language is also mentioned in educational legislation. The School Act (Skollag) for example includes sign language in education as a subject (Chapter 12(4)). (..)
Chapter 3(10) requires schools to arrange instruction in the mother tongue (including sign language) if there are at least three pupils in the school who choose the language. The Decree on Secondary Schools (Gymnasieförordning 1992:394) lists Swedish Sign Langauge as an optional foreign language for hearing students. (..)
Another decree mentioning sign language is the Decree on Governmental Allowance for Instruction in Sign Language for Certain Parents, which requires the government to pay for the teaching of sign language to parents whose chlidren require sign language (Section 1). Section 2 further describes the necessity of this provision:
'Teaching sign language to parents shall aim at giving parents competence to communicate fluently with their children in sign language and therefore promote the development of the children.'"
Number of Deaf Sign Language Users
8,000 (EUD website, December 2016)
National Sign Language (Research) Centres
Sign Language Section of the Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University
"The Sign Language Section has two kinds of courses in and about Swedish Sign Language; Swedish Sign Language (focusing on sign linguistics) and Swedish Sign Language for beginners. The Department also offers the only PhD program in Sign Language in Sweden."
More info.
Anna-Lena Nilsson, Krister Schönström: Swedish Sign Language as a Second Language: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives.
In: McKee, D., R.S. Rosen, R. McKee (eds.): Teaching and Learning Signed Languages. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014
"Though a national curriculum for SSL (Swedish Sign Language) as L2 was produced in the mid-1990s, when the subject was introduced in schools for hearing pupils, no formal training for teachers of SSL was ever established. This lack of formal teachers' training, as well as the lack of teaching materials, was discussed in parliament several times during the late 1990s, but despite these discussions nothing changed." (page 19)
"Currently, the Swedish system for training teachers is changing, due to new legislation demanding that teachers have formal qualifications for the topics and school levels which they teach. To be allowed to teach and to give grades, an authorization as a qualified teacher will very soon be needed (SFS, 2011:326). However, teachers of SSL have not been taken into consideration during the process, and teachers who have been teaching SSL for years suddenly find they do not have the formal qualifications to be authorized for teaching in schools." (page 20)
"The changing context in the deaf community thus provides us with many new issues to consider, and challenges for the future related to the learning and teaching of SSL. In Schönström (forthcoming) the demand for bilingualism for deaf children with CI and HoH children was surveyed. (..) The study clearly showed that on the one hand, the SSL skills varied more among these children than among children enrolled in schools in the 2000s. On the other hand, there is still a clear need for SSL among these children. SSL may have to be taught as L2 to many of them, adapting the teaching especially according to the fact that they are HoH or have CI. All teachers were in agreement that there is a need for more knowledge about how this should best be done." (page 29).
"As we have shown, the conditions for SSL are changing, as is the whole context. Though SSL was one of the first signed language s in the world to be recognized, we are now in a situation where the numb er of deaf people learning SSL as L1 is in fact decreasing and the proportion of deaf people likely to learn it as an L2 is increasing." (page 30)
"Traditionally, many deaf persons have worked as SSL teachers. Even though many of them had no formal education, at least they had their L1 knowledge to rely on when teaching hearing L2 learners. But if the number of deaf persons with SSL as L2 decreases, and since there is still no formal teacher training program available for teachers of SSL, who will teach the language in the future? In addition, due to new legislation, only people who have trained to be formally qualified teachers will be allowed to give grades and to hold permanent positions as teachers. This will indeed be a challenge for the future." (page 31)
