The Balinese Homesign Corpus: New insights into corpus development in a rural signing context

Abstract

The Balinese Homesign Corpus is a collection of homesign varieties that emerged within the same gestural context as sign languages that are used in northern Bali, such as Kata Kolok. This paper provides a detailed account of the data collection process carried out by a group of local research assistants. An ethnographic overview of the social interaction among homesigners with Kata Kolok signers is also provided. We suggest that several factors, such as topography, gender-specific norms, and technology, may play a role in the social networks of the homesigners. Furthermore, we observe that homesigners in Bali are not living in complete isolation. While they might not have full access to all domains of social life, they are tightly integrated into religious duties and family routines. This paper highlights the importance of locally led data collection for improving the ecological validity and the quality of data. We suggest methods like mobile ethnographic filmmaking (Moriarty 2020) could provide valuable insights into the role of social interaction in the emergence of homesign in future work.