Attitudes Towards the Official Recognition of Hong Kong Sign Language by Hong Kong Citizens

This paper is a pilot study that investigates the attitudes towards the official recognition of Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) by Hong Kong citizens. We used video-chat software (mainly WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger, but also FaceTime) to conduct long-distance semi-structured interviews with 30 participants grouped as deaf, hearing-related (hearing people that are closely involved in the Deaf community), and hearing unrelated (hearing people that have little contact with deaf people and the Deaf community). Results show that the majority of participants (N=22)holds a supportive attitude towards the recognition of HKSL; Five participants hold a neutral position, and three participants hold a negative attitude towards it. We discussed each type of attitude in detail. Results show that participants’ attitudes are positively related to their awareness of deaf people’s need, the understanding of ‘language recognition’, and personal world views. In other words, the more participants are aware,the more they foster official recognition, at least as a general trend.Results also indicate that hearing people who are not involved in the Deaf community know very little about deaf people and the Deaf community,in general. At the end of the paper, we also reflect on two issues: we argue that the standardization of HKSL plays an important role in deaf education and empowering citizenship awareness and participation.