Rachel Mckee
Biographic Data
| ID | 754426 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rachel Mckee |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rachel |
| FAMILY NAME | Mckee |
| SIGNATURE | MCKEE R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Victoria University of Wellington |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5691-8051 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Pragmatics of second person address variation in New Zealand Sign Language
Two hands are powerful”. Handedness variation and genre in New Zealand Sign Language
Constructing Māori deaf identity in New Zealand Sign Language
How do Māori deaf people use and perceive variable features of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) to invoke ethnolinguistic identity? Previous research has documented motivation among Māori deaf people to signal ethnic identity linguistically within and outside the NZSL community (McKee, McKee, Smiler, & Pointon 2007), but how this plays out in situated language practices has not been explored. This study proceeds from Eckert's (2012:98) contention…
Recent lexical expansion in New Zealand Sign Language: Context, scope and mechanisms
This paper examines recent lexical expansion in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) in the context of change in the status of the language and ongoing contact with other (spoken and signed) languages. We categorised 917 new signs documented in the past five years according to their source, semantic field, and sign formation mechanism(s), both language-internal and language-external (contact induced). Lexical expansion in NZSL uses known sign formati…
Putting NZSL on the page: Multilingual/multimodal picturebooks in New Zealand
Picturebooks are powerful educational tools, both for their content and their contributions to the literacy development of children. In New Zealand bilingual picturebooks featuring Te Reo Māori and New Zealand English have increased in number since the 1980s when Te Reo Māori gained official status and revitalisation efforts burgeoned. More recently, New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) has been recognised as the preferred language of the deaf commun…
Sign names in an intercultural classroom space: Practices and perceptions of sign language teachers and students
This study investigates practices around the bestowal of personal sign names to adult New Zealand Sign Language learners, from both teachers' and students' perspectives. Key findings include that, (1) learners receive similar types of sign names to deaf signers but in different proportions; (2) getting a sign name is regarded as a significant milestone and a valuable commodity in constructing an intercultural identity as a `new signer'; (3) deaf …
Form, frequency and sociolinguistic variation in depicting signs in New Zealand Sign Language
Globalization, hybridity, and vitality in the linguistic ideologies of New Zealand Sign Language users
Sign language interpreting in the Pacific: A snapshot of progress in raising the participation of deaf people
Barriers to acquiring and using a shared sign language alienate deaf children and adults from their fundamental human rights to communication, education, social and economic participation, and access to services. International data collected by the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) identify that in economically developing countries, deaf individuals are at particularly high risk of marginalization, which applies to countries in the Pacific regio…
Understanding International Sign: A sociolinguistic study by Lori A. Whynot
Reviewed by: Understanding International Sign: A sociolinguistic study by Lori A. Whynot Rachel McKee Understanding International Sign: A sociolinguistic study. By Lori A. Whynot. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2016. Pp. 350. ISBN 9781563686726. $85 (Hb/ebook). Deaf people's capacity to negotiate communication across different native sign languages has long been appreciated in the deaf world as a visual-language advantage. In recent …
Breaking news: Sign language interpreters on television during natural disasters
Flood, cyclone and earthquake disasters in Australia and New Zealand in 2011 brought sign language interpreters into the media spotlight in these countries. Their inclusion in television broadcasts to communicate emergency-related information was unprecedented in both countries, and attracted strong responses from Deaf viewers and the general public. Drawing on retrospective interviews with two New Zealand interpreters and one Australian interpre…
Variable “subject” presence in Australian Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language
This article reports the findings of parallel studies of variable subject presence in two closely related sign language varieties, Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). The studies expand upon research in American Sign Language (ASL) (Wulf, Dudis, Bayley, & Lucas, 2002) that found subject pronouns with noninflecting verbs to be more frequently unexpressed than expressed. The ASL study reported that null subject u…
Māori Signs: The Construction of Indigenous Deaf Identity in New Zealand Sign Language
Motives and outcomes of New Zealand sign language legislation: A comparative study between New Zealand and Finland
The medicalized interpretation of deafness has until recently seen the rights and protections of sign language users embedded in disability law. Yet the rights and protections crucial to sign language users centre predominantly on matters of language access, maintenance and identity. Legislators, motivated by pressure from sign language communities and in response to international human rights laws, have begun to enact statutes that include provi…
Phonological variation and change in Australian and New Zealand Sign Languages: The location variable
In this study, we consider variation in a class of signs in Australian and New Zealand Sign Languages that includes the signs think, name , and clever . In their citation form, these signs are specified for a place of articulation at or near the signer's forehead or above, but are sometimes produced at lower locations. An analysis of 2667 tokens collected from 205 deaf signers in five sites across Australia and of 2096 tokens collected from 138 d…
The Construction of Deaf Children as Marginal Bilinguals in the Mainstream
The political discourse of Deaf ethnolinguistic identity has empowered Deaf people in recent decades to deconstruct a pathological model of deafness and the deficit pedagogy that centres on acquisition of speech and social assimilation. The engagement of Deaf community members in consultation and employment in the New Zealand (NZ) education system has progressed the ideological recognition of Deaf claims for a bilingual identity and pedagogy in t…
The Construction of Deaf Children as Marginal Bilinguals in the Mainstream
Connecting Hearing Parents with the Deaf World
The parental experience of raising a child who is potentially a Deaf community member can be framed in terms of 'migration theory' (Laing, this volume), in contrast to the grief-centred models commonly presented to parents. This migration model is grounded in an understanding that deafness is a culturallinguistic status. Usually responses and advice to parents of Deaf children are framed within a medicalised, deficit paradigm of deafness as an im…
Perceptions of Maori Deaf Identity in New Zealand
Following the reframing of "Deaf" as a cultural and linguistic identity, ethnic minority members of Deaf communities are increasingly exploring their plural identities in relation to Deaf and hearing communities of affiliation. This article examines Maori Deaf people's perceptions of identity, during a coinciding period of Tino Rangatiratanga (Maori cultural and political self-determination and empowerment)1 and the emergence of Deaf empowerment.…
Phonological variation and change in Australian and New Zealand Sign Languages: The location variable
In this study, we consider variation in a class of signs in Australian and New Zealand Sign Languages that includes the signs think, name , and clever . In their citation form, these signs are specified for a place of articulation at or near the signer's forehead or above, but are sometimes produced at lower locations. An analysis of 2667 tokens collected from 205 deaf signers in five sites across Australia and of 2096 tokens collected from 138 d…
Variable “subject” presence in Australian Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language
This article reports the findings of parallel studies of variable subject presence in two closely related sign language varieties, Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). The studies expand upon research in American Sign Language (ASL) (Wulf, Dudis, Bayley, & Lucas, 2002) that found subject pronouns with noninflecting verbs to be more frequently unexpressed than expressed. The ASL study reported that null subject u…
Breaking news: Sign language interpreters on television during natural disasters
Flood, cyclone and earthquake disasters in Australia and New Zealand in 2011 brought sign language interpreters into the media spotlight in these countries. Their inclusion in television broadcasts to communicate emergency-related information was unprecedented in both countries, and attracted strong responses from Deaf viewers and the general public. Drawing on retrospective interviews with two New Zealand interpreters and one Australian interpre…
Globalization, hybridity, and vitality in the linguistic ideologies of New Zealand Sign Language users
Two hands are powerful”. Handedness variation and genre in New Zealand Sign Language
Constructing Māori deaf identity in New Zealand Sign Language
How do Māori deaf people use and perceive variable features of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) to invoke ethnolinguistic identity? Previous research has documented motivation among Māori deaf people to signal ethnic identity linguistically within and outside the NZSL community (McKee, McKee, Smiler, & Pointon 2007), but how this plays out in situated language practices has not been explored. This study proceeds from Eckert's (2012:98) contention…
Recent lexical expansion in New Zealand Sign Language: Context, scope and mechanisms
This paper examines recent lexical expansion in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) in the context of change in the status of the language and ongoing contact with other (spoken and signed) languages. We categorised 917 new signs documented in the past five years according to their source, semantic field, and sign formation mechanism(s), both language-internal and language-external (contact induced). Lexical expansion in NZSL uses known sign formati…
Form, frequency and sociolinguistic variation in depicting signs in New Zealand Sign Language
Motives and outcomes of New Zealand sign language legislation: A comparative study between New Zealand and Finland
The medicalized interpretation of deafness has until recently seen the rights and protections of sign language users embedded in disability law. Yet the rights and protections crucial to sign language users centre predominantly on matters of language access, maintenance and identity. Legislators, motivated by pressure from sign language communities and in response to international human rights laws, have begun to enact statutes that include provi…
Connecting Hearing Parents with the Deaf World
The parental experience of raising a child who is potentially a Deaf community member can be framed in terms of 'migration theory' (Laing, this volume), in contrast to the grief-centred models commonly presented to parents. This migration model is grounded in an understanding that deafness is a culturallinguistic status. Usually responses and advice to parents of Deaf children are framed within a medicalised, deficit paradigm of deafness as an im…
Perceptions of Maori Deaf Identity in New Zealand
Following the reframing of "Deaf" as a cultural and linguistic identity, ethnic minority members of Deaf communities are increasingly exploring their plural identities in relation to Deaf and hearing communities of affiliation. This article examines Maori Deaf people's perceptions of identity, during a coinciding period of Tino Rangatiratanga (Maori cultural and political self-determination and empowerment)1 and the emergence of Deaf empowerment.…
The Construction of Deaf Children as Marginal Bilinguals in the Mainstream
The political discourse of Deaf ethnolinguistic identity has empowered Deaf people in recent decades to deconstruct a pathological model of deafness and the deficit pedagogy that centres on acquisition of speech and social assimilation. The engagement of Deaf community members in consultation and employment in the New Zealand (NZ) education system has progressed the ideological recognition of Deaf claims for a bilingual identity and pedagogy in t…
The Construction of Deaf Children as Marginal Bilinguals in the Mainstream
Māori Signs: The Construction of Indigenous Deaf Identity in New Zealand Sign Language
Motives and outcomes of New Zealand sign language legislation: A comparative study between New Zealand and Finland
The medicalized interpretation of deafness has until recently seen the rights and protections of sign language users embedded in disability law. Yet the rights and protections crucial to sign language users centre predominantly on matters of language access, maintenance and identity. Legislators, motivated by pressure from sign language communities and in response to international human rights laws, have begun to enact statutes that include provi…
Phonological variation and change in Australian and New Zealand Sign Languages: The location variable
In this study, we consider variation in a class of signs in Australian and New Zealand Sign Languages that includes the signs think, name , and clever . In their citation form, these signs are specified for a place of articulation at or near the signer's forehead or above, but are sometimes produced at lower locations. An analysis of 2667 tokens collected from 205 deaf signers in five sites across Australia and of 2096 tokens collected from 138 d…
Variable “subject” presence in Australian Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language
This article reports the findings of parallel studies of variable subject presence in two closely related sign language varieties, Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). The studies expand upon research in American Sign Language (ASL) (Wulf, Dudis, Bayley, & Lucas, 2002) that found subject pronouns with noninflecting verbs to be more frequently unexpressed than expressed. The ASL study reported that null subject u…
Breaking news: Sign language interpreters on television during natural disasters
Flood, cyclone and earthquake disasters in Australia and New Zealand in 2011 brought sign language interpreters into the media spotlight in these countries. Their inclusion in television broadcasts to communicate emergency-related information was unprecedented in both countries, and attracted strong responses from Deaf viewers and the general public. Drawing on retrospective interviews with two New Zealand interpreters and one Australian interpre…
Understanding International Sign: A sociolinguistic study by Lori A. Whynot
Reviewed by: Understanding International Sign: A sociolinguistic study by Lori A. Whynot Rachel McKee Understanding International Sign: A sociolinguistic study. By Lori A. Whynot. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2016. Pp. 350. ISBN 9781563686726. $85 (Hb/ebook). Deaf people's capacity to negotiate communication across different native sign languages has long been appreciated in the deaf world as a visual-language advantage. In recent …
Sign language interpreting in the Pacific: A snapshot of progress in raising the participation of deaf people
Barriers to acquiring and using a shared sign language alienate deaf children and adults from their fundamental human rights to communication, education, social and economic participation, and access to services. International data collected by the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) identify that in economically developing countries, deaf individuals are at particularly high risk of marginalization, which applies to countries in the Pacific regio…
Globalization, hybridity, and vitality in the linguistic ideologies of New Zealand Sign Language users
Sign names in an intercultural classroom space: Practices and perceptions of sign language teachers and students
This study investigates practices around the bestowal of personal sign names to adult New Zealand Sign Language learners, from both teachers' and students' perspectives. Key findings include that, (1) learners receive similar types of sign names to deaf signers but in different proportions; (2) getting a sign name is regarded as a significant milestone and a valuable commodity in constructing an intercultural identity as a `new signer'; (3) deaf …
Form, frequency and sociolinguistic variation in depicting signs in New Zealand Sign Language
Putting NZSL on the page: Multilingual/multimodal picturebooks in New Zealand
Picturebooks are powerful educational tools, both for their content and their contributions to the literacy development of children. In New Zealand bilingual picturebooks featuring Te Reo Māori and New Zealand English have increased in number since the 1980s when Te Reo Māori gained official status and revitalisation efforts burgeoned. More recently, New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) has been recognised as the preferred language of the deaf commun…
Recent lexical expansion in New Zealand Sign Language: Context, scope and mechanisms
This paper examines recent lexical expansion in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) in the context of change in the status of the language and ongoing contact with other (spoken and signed) languages. We categorised 917 new signs documented in the past five years according to their source, semantic field, and sign formation mechanism(s), both language-internal and language-external (contact induced). Lexical expansion in NZSL uses known sign formati…
Pragmatics of second person address variation in New Zealand Sign Language
Two hands are powerful”. Handedness variation and genre in New Zealand Sign Language
Constructing Māori deaf identity in New Zealand Sign Language
How do Māori deaf people use and perceive variable features of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) to invoke ethnolinguistic identity? Previous research has documented motivation among Māori deaf people to signal ethnic identity linguistically within and outside the NZSL community (McKee, McKee, Smiler, & Pointon 2007), but how this plays out in situated language practices has not been explored. This study proceeds from Eckert's (2012:98) contention…
Linguistics (18 works) · Hearing Impairment and Communication (17 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (14 works) · Sign language (14 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Political science (8 works) · Sign (mathematics (7 works) · History (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works)