John Napier
Biographic Data
| ID | 185898 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Napier |
| GIVEN NAMES | John |
| FAMILY NAME | Napier |
| SIGNATURE | NAPIER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Heriot-Watt University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6283-5810 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 81 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1962 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
A qualitative literature review of how hearing codas navigate deafness stigma
The theoretical contexts of stigma have rarely been applied to a study of the experiences of hearing children of deaf adults (Codas), nor to the ways they respond to parental stigmatization and the efforts they take to protect their parents from these stressors. The wellbeing of Coda children, young people and adults is known to be challenged by discrimination and social exclusion arising from deaf-related stigmatization. It is therefore imperati…
Signed Language Interpreting Profession
This entry provides an overview of the development of the signed language interpreting profession worldwide. It documents key milestones in the professionalization process and issues that distinguish signed from spoken language interpreting concerning role, ethics, and training.
Research on Signed Language Translation and Interpreting
This entry provides an overview of the development of signed language interpreting and translation research. It documents the most prolific research domains including role and ethics, profile of interpreters and translators, interpreting in education, legal, and healthcare settings; and emerging topics on deaf practitioners, high‐level interpreting, and video remote interpreting.
The luxury of time
This paper explores the notion of time when undertaking interpreter-mediated Mental Health Act Assessments (MHAAs) from the perspective of Approved Mental Health Professionals (AMHPs). It is based on one theme that emerged from a reflexive thematic analysis of 17 semi-structured interviews with AMHPs undertaken as part of a larger corpus ( Young et al., 2023 ). We found when carrying out interpreter-mediated MHAAs, AMHPs perceive time as luxury; …
Just interpret
This article explores the lived experience of signed and spoken language interpreters in the context of Mental Health Act (1983) assessments (MHAAs) in England, based principally on data from 10 interviews from a wider corpus of the Interpreters for Mental Health Act assessments (INforMHAA) study (2021–2024). Informed by Braun and Clarke’s (2022) reflexive thematic analysis and Dean and Pollard’s (2001) Demand Control Schema, the present study in…
Interpreter mediation in statutory mental health assessments
This interdisciplinary scoping review addresses the involvement of spoken and signed language interpreters in statutory mental health assessments. Specifically, this inquiry seeks to identify and review pre-existing literature concerning the barriers to and facilitators of effective practice in interpreter-mediated statutory mental health assessments, and the extent to which interpreter mediation supports or impedes a person’s legal rights and be…
Mental health professionals' (AMHPs) perspectives on interpreter-mediated mental health act assessments
This article concerns interpreter-mediated Mental Health Act (MHA) (1983) assessments where either a signed or spoken language interpreter is required. It reports data from 132 Approved Mental Health Professionals (AMHPs) in England who have direct experience of such circumstances addressing expertise, training, readiness, and potential influences on the outcome when interpreters are involved. Quantitative data were collected by means of an onlin…
Do Deaf Women Feel Safe on Campus? A Qualitative Case Study of One UK University
With increasing attention to sexual misconduct on university campuses, universities have focused attention on campus safety, but safety systems are based on assumptions that people who live and work on campuses are able-minded and able-bodied. Any contemplation of campus safety needs to consider the intersectional experiences of students and staff. Considering the experiences of people from minoritised groups can provide insights into socially co…
International Sign conference interpreters as a Community of Practice
Conference signed language interpreters traditionally work between their national sign language and the national spoken or written language. During their careers, interpreters may add other spoken or signed languages to their repertoire. Some also acquire International Sign (IS) as a working language and interpret between IS and other signed and spoken languages. Being highly context dependent, IS has limited conventions and there is no establish…
Representation and diversity in the sign language translation and interpreting profession in the United Kingdom
This article reports the findings of a nationwide sign language translator and interpreter (SLTI) census to establish a baseline description of the United Kingdom’s SLTI workforce that was commissioned by the Association of Sign Language Interpreters UK. Complete responses were received from 690 practitioners from across the United Kingdom (43% of the potential sample). The survey responses were analysed using the SPSS statistical software, speci…
Health Care Needs of Deaf Signers
There is a need for culturally competent health care providers (HCPs) to provide care to deaf signers, who are members of a linguistic and cultural minority group. Many deaf signers have lower health literacy levels due to deprivation of incidental learning opportunities and inaccessibility of health-related materials, increasing their risk for poorer health outcomes. Communication barriers arise because HCPs are ill-prepared to serve this popula…
Family language policy on holiday
Most FLP research focuses on intrafamily communication (1FLP) and how this is impacted by larger contexts. But what happens when different multilingual families interact intensively on a daily basis? This article analyses language use during a holiday in India in and between four deaf-hearing befriended families, and how this evolved over the twelve days of the trip (4FLP). Three of the four families are our (the authors’) own. The family members…
Interpretação jurídica, surdos e serviço de júri
Este artigo foi publicado na revista da Associação de Intérpretes de Língua de Sinais no Reino Unido. Ele dá uma visão geral da interpretação legal, e uma questão particularmente atual para a comunidade surda, se eles devem ser autorizados a servir como jurados em tribunais penais com intérpretes. Atualmente, em muitos países, isso não é permitido. Em qualquer país, a interpretação jurídica, e qualquer combinação de idiomas, é um desafio, então e…
When I speak people look at me
Deaf people's lives are predicated to some extent on working with sign language interpreters. The self is translated on a regular basis and is a long-term state of being. Identity becomes known and performed through the translated self in many interactions, especially at work. (Hearing) others' experience of deaf people, largely formed indirectly through the use of sign language interpreters, is rarely understood as intercultural or from a socioc…
If you put pressure on yourself to produce then that's your responsibility’
Women remain underrepresented in senior positions within universities and report barriers to career progression. Drawing on the concepts of Foucault and Bourdieu, with an emphasis on technologies of the self, this article aims to understand mothers’ academic career experiences. Interviews were conducted with 35 non‐STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) academics in Scotland and Australia, to reveal the gender dimensio…
Deaf citizens as jurors in Australian courts
Australian deaf citizens are currently not permitted to perform jury duty, primarily due to their inability to hear the evidence and deliberate without the help of interpreters. Although interpreters are routinely employed to interpret for defendants or witnesses in court, current legal frameworks do not permit interpreters to enter the deliberation room as a ‘thirteenth person’, for fear that they may influence the jurors in their decision-makin…
Jury instructions
This project investigated the capacity of deaf people using Australian Sign Language (Auslan) to serve as jurors. Following on from a pilot study with 6 deaf and 6 hearing people acting as ‘jurors’ (see Napier & Spencer, 2007, 2008), this project replicated the method of the earlier study, and compared the level of comprehension of 30 deaf jurors to a control group of 30 non-deaf (‘hearing’) jurors from three different major cities in Australia; …
Deaf leaders’ strategies for working with signed language interpreters
In this paper, we report interview data from 14 Deaf leaders across seven countries (Australia, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States) regarding their perspectives on signed language interpreters. Using a semistructured survey questionnaire, seven interpreting researchers interviewed two Deaf leaders each in their home countries. Following transcription of the data, the researchers conducted a t…
Justice is blind as long as it isn’t deaf
In the wake of a recent decision by the High Court of Australia, currently a deaf person, who relies on sign language, is not able to serve as a juror because Australian law does not permit the swearing in of an interpreter as the ‘13th person’ in the jury room. In 2016, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities found that Australia is in breach of its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Di…
Directionality in Signed Language Interpreting
This mixed methods study investigated the effects of directionality (language direction) and age of signed language acquisition on the simultaneous interpreting performance of professional English/Auslan (Australian Sign Language) interpreters, who comprised native signers and non-native signers. Each participant interpreted presentations simultaneously from English into Auslan, and vice versa, with each task followed by a brief semi-structured i…
Medical Signbank as a model for sign language planning? A review of community engagement
This paper reviews a sign language planning project conducted in Australia with deaf Auslan users. The Medical Signbank project utilised a cooperative language planning process to engage with the Deaf community and sign language interpreters to develop an online interactive resource of health-related signs, in order to address a gap in the health lexicon of Auslan. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the outcome of the bottom-up language planni…
Do Deaf People Have the Right to Serve as Jurors in Australia
Approaches to social research
This book is a welcome addition to the growing number of books that are exploring theoretical and methodological issues in research with deaf people. As the authors make it very clear, though, in t
Signed Language Working Memory Capacity of Signed Language Interpreters and Deaf Signers
This study investigated the effects of hearing status and age of signed language acquisition on signed language working memory capacity. Professional Auslan (Australian sign language)/English interpreters (hearing native signers and hearing nonnative signers) and deaf Auslan signers (deaf native signers and deaf nonnative signers) completed an Auslan working memory (WM) span task. The results revealed that the hearing signers (i.e., the professio…
Tonight You Will Hear the Wedding of God
This paper investigates a performance of the Mahādevjī kā byāvalā , a kathā or story, by Kishori Nāth, a Rājasthani musician. The story is familiar: performers engage audiences through several strategies. I outline two of these: tone and heteroglossia. Performers are never evaluated primarily for musical ability, and most present the kathā using only a few melodies. Kishori Nāth's performance was atypical, using 110 distinct melodies. Analysis of…
If you put pressure on yourself to produce then that's your responsibility’
Women remain underrepresented in senior positions within universities and report barriers to career progression. Drawing on the concepts of Foucault and Bourdieu, with an emphasis on technologies of the self, this article aims to understand mothers’ academic career experiences. Interviews were conducted with 35 non‐STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) academics in Scotland and Australia, to reveal the gender dimensio…
Evaluating emotional stability as a predictor of interpreter competence and aptitude for interpreting
This paper proposes that variance in interpreter performance is dependent on factors of both general cognitive ability and personality. Whilst there is no doubt of the interplay between individual personality traits and job performance across many occupations, the greatest interest lies in determining which traits play the most important role; and to what extent these variables impact on learning and achievement. The paper reports on a study of 1…
Interpreting omissions
This paper discusses findings of a study conducted on Australian Sign Language (Auslan)/English interpreters in a university lecture, with consideration given to factors that influenced the interpreters’ omissions. The hypothesis of the study was that interpreters would make recourse to omissions both consciously and unconsciously, depending on their familiarity with the discourse environment and the subject matter. Through exploration of theoret…
Family language policy on holiday
Most FLP research focuses on intrafamily communication (1FLP) and how this is impacted by larger contexts. But what happens when different multilingual families interact intensively on a daily basis? This article analyses language use during a holiday in India in and between four deaf-hearing befriended families, and how this evolved over the twelve days of the trip (4FLP). Three of the four families are our (the authors’) own. The family members…
When I speak people look at me
Deaf people's lives are predicated to some extent on working with sign language interpreters. The self is translated on a regular basis and is a long-term state of being. Identity becomes known and performed through the translated self in many interactions, especially at work. (Hearing) others' experience of deaf people, largely formed indirectly through the use of sign language interpreters, is rarely understood as intercultural or from a socioc…
Do Deaf People Have the Right to Serve as Jurors in Australia
Fossil Hand Bones from Olduvai Gorge
Interpretação jurídica, surdos e serviço de júri
Este artigo foi publicado na revista da Associação de Intérpretes de Língua de Sinais no Reino Unido. Ele dá uma visão geral da interpretação legal, e uma questão particularmente atual para a comunidade surda, se eles devem ser autorizados a servir como jurados em tribunais penais com intérpretes. Atualmente, em muitos países, isso não é permitido. Em qualquer país, a interpretação jurídica, e qualquer combinação de idiomas, é um desafio, então e…
Justice is blind as long as it isn’t deaf
In the wake of a recent decision by the High Court of Australia, currently a deaf person, who relies on sign language, is not able to serve as a juror because Australian law does not permit the swearing in of an interpreter as the ‘13th person’ in the jury room. In 2016, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities found that Australia is in breach of its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Di…
Approaches to social research
This book is a welcome addition to the growing number of books that are exploring theoretical and methodological issues in research with deaf people. As the authors make it very clear, though, in t
Re-organization and Rhetoric
This article re-examines some of the conclusions drawn about the social organization of North Indian classical music by Daniel Neuman in his writings of1977 and 1980. It marks the changes effected in the relationship between soloist and accompanist system through the ascendancy of specialists from other than traditional backgrounds. It explores the way such changes are framed by practitioners by validation through the rhetoric of tradition, pedig…
Social Studies Project Evaluation
Bigfoot
Fossil Hand Bones from Olduvai Gorge
Fossil Hand Bones from Olduvai Gorge
Bigfoot
Social Studies Project Evaluation
University Interpreting
This study describes Auslan/English interpreters' use of translation style when interpreting for a university lecture. Some interpreters switched translation style, between free and literal methods of interpretation, as a linguistic strategy for dealing with the sociolinguistic influences of the discourse environment. In particular, attention was paid to the interpreters' educational background (and therefore their familiarity with academic disco…
Accessing University Education
This paper provides a brief review of the history of deaf education in Australia, Australian Sign Language (Auslan), and Auslan interpreting. A panel of Australian deaf university students from diverse linguistic and educational backgrounds provides insights into their perceptions of sign language interpreting provision in university lectures. They commented on their interpreting preferences after viewing two videotaped segments of university lec…
Re-organization and Rhetoric
This article re-examines some of the conclusions drawn about the social organization of North Indian classical music by Daniel Neuman in his writings of1977 and 1980. It marks the changes effected in the relationship between soloist and accompanist system through the ascendancy of specialists from other than traditional backgrounds. It explores the way such changes are framed by practitioners by validation through the rhetoric of tradition, pedig…
Interpreting omissions
This paper discusses findings of a study conducted on Australian Sign Language (Auslan)/English interpreters in a university lecture, with consideration given to factors that influenced the interpreters’ omissions. The hypothesis of the study was that interpreters would make recourse to omissions both consciously and unconsciously, depending on their familiarity with the discourse environment and the subject matter. Through exploration of theoret…
Effectively Teaching Discourse to Sign Language Interpreting Students
This paper explores discourse features of Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and the need for sign language interpreting students to acquire an understanding of, and skills in, a range of discourse genres in Auslan in order to effectively carry out the work required in their profession. Discourse features of spoken English are outlined and compared with those of signed languages, and an overview of the curriculum and effective teaching approaches …
An historical overview of signed language interpreting research
In the last twenty-five years research into signed language interpreting has burgeoned as a sub-discipline of translation and interpreting studies. Grbic’s (2007) bibliometric analysis of signed language interpreting (SLI) research provides an interesting picture of the research that has been conducted over the years. In developing a database of SLI literature, Grbic analysed 908 research texts produced from 1970 to 2005. She found that that ther…
Evaluating emotional stability as a predictor of interpreter competence and aptitude for interpreting
This paper proposes that variance in interpreter performance is dependent on factors of both general cognitive ability and personality. Whilst there is no doubt of the interplay between individual personality traits and job performance across many occupations, the greatest interest lies in determining which traits play the most important role; and to what extent these variables impact on learning and achievement. The paper reports on a study of 1…
"It's not what they say but the way they say it". A content analysis of interpreter and consumer perceptions towards signed language interpreting in Australia
This paper presents findings of an innovative study, which involved the thematic and content analyses of discussions held by deaf people, hearing people and interpreters about signed language interpreting in Australia. Six focus groups yielded eight hours of data, which was analyzed to identify themes that emerged about participants' perceptions about interpreters and interpreting. Examples are given to compare how participants view the signed la…
Research on Signed Language Interpreting
As with interpreting research more generally, signed language interpreting (SLI) research is an emerging subdiscipline of translation studies.
Signed Language Interpreting Profession
Interpreting is an applied linguistic activity; the act of mediating between languages and cultures involves the application of linguistic knowledge across a wide range of communicative settings.
Signed Language Working Memory Capacity of Signed Language Interpreters and Deaf Signers
This study investigated the effects of hearing status and age of signed language acquisition on signed language working memory capacity. Professional Auslan (Australian sign language)/English interpreters (hearing native signers and hearing nonnative signers) and deaf Auslan signers (deaf native signers and deaf nonnative signers) completed an Auslan working memory (WM) span task. The results revealed that the hearing signers (i.e., the professio…
Tonight You Will Hear the Wedding of God
This paper investigates a performance of the Mahādevjī kā byāvalā , a kathā or story, by Kishori Nāth, a Rājasthani musician. The story is familiar: performers engage audiences through several strategies. I outline two of these: tone and heteroglossia. Performers are never evaluated primarily for musical ability, and most present the kathā using only a few melodies. Kishori Nāth's performance was atypical, using 110 distinct melodies. Analysis of…
Approaches to social research
This book is a welcome addition to the growing number of books that are exploring theoretical and methodological issues in research with deaf people. As the authors make it very clear, though, in t
Medical Signbank as a model for sign language planning? A review of community engagement
This paper reviews a sign language planning project conducted in Australia with deaf Auslan users. The Medical Signbank project utilised a cooperative language planning process to engage with the Deaf community and sign language interpreters to develop an online interactive resource of health-related signs, in order to address a gap in the health lexicon of Auslan. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the outcome of the bottom-up language planni…
Do Deaf People Have the Right to Serve as Jurors in Australia
Directionality in Signed Language Interpreting
This mixed methods study investigated the effects of directionality (language direction) and age of signed language acquisition on the simultaneous interpreting performance of professional English/Auslan (Australian Sign Language) interpreters, who comprised native signers and non-native signers. Each participant interpreted presentations simultaneously from English into Auslan, and vice versa, with each task followed by a brief semi-structured i…
Deaf citizens as jurors in Australian courts
Australian deaf citizens are currently not permitted to perform jury duty, primarily due to their inability to hear the evidence and deliberate without the help of interpreters. Although interpreters are routinely employed to interpret for defendants or witnesses in court, current legal frameworks do not permit interpreters to enter the deliberation room as a ‘thirteenth person’, for fear that they may influence the jurors in their decision-makin…
Jury instructions
This project investigated the capacity of deaf people using Australian Sign Language (Auslan) to serve as jurors. Following on from a pilot study with 6 deaf and 6 hearing people acting as ‘jurors’ (see Napier & Spencer, 2007, 2008), this project replicated the method of the earlier study, and compared the level of comprehension of 30 deaf jurors to a control group of 30 non-deaf (‘hearing’) jurors from three different major cities in Australia; …
Deaf leaders’ strategies for working with signed language interpreters
In this paper, we report interview data from 14 Deaf leaders across seven countries (Australia, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States) regarding their perspectives on signed language interpreters. Using a semistructured survey questionnaire, seven interpreting researchers interviewed two Deaf leaders each in their home countries. Following transcription of the data, the researchers conducted a t…
Justice is blind as long as it isn’t deaf
In the wake of a recent decision by the High Court of Australia, currently a deaf person, who relies on sign language, is not able to serve as a juror because Australian law does not permit the swearing in of an interpreter as the ‘13th person’ in the jury room. In 2016, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities found that Australia is in breach of its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Di…
If you put pressure on yourself to produce then that's your responsibility’
Women remain underrepresented in senior positions within universities and report barriers to career progression. Drawing on the concepts of Foucault and Bourdieu, with an emphasis on technologies of the self, this article aims to understand mothers’ academic career experiences. Interviews were conducted with 35 non‐STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) academics in Scotland and Australia, to reveal the gender dimensio…
Psychology (24 works) · Interpreting and Communication in Healthcare (22 works) · Computer Science (21 works) · Interpreter (21 works) · Linguistics (20 works) · Hearing Impairment and Communication (18 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (18 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Sign language (14 works) · Language interpretation (9 works)