Meaningful Work with Sign Language and Other Factors for Job Satisfaction - Pamela Perniss

Speaker 1 00:00

And how about you? Why do you work at the University of Cologne? I have been asked this question a lot. My name is Maria Schmitz-Hüser, Head of Recruitment at the University of Cologne, and I focus on how we can approach, attract and retain interested and suitable colleagues. In the last episode, Christiane Biehl told me why she works at the University of Cologne, and what her daily business as Deputy Head of the Division International Affairs, Head of the Department International Mobility, and a member of the Senate at the University of Cologne looks like. And now we continue with Pamela Perniss.

Speaker 2 00:46

I'm a linguist by training, and I actually studied at the University of Cologne. I came here because of the General Linguistics program, which really had an eye to linguistic diversity and looking around the world at the different languages and cultures, and I got into sign language linguistics, and stayed with it. And that took me to various other places, including the Netherlands and the UK. And then I came back to the University of Cologne about six years ago. I love working in linguistics and in sign language linguistics, and that, in some ways, sums up my academic persona.

Speaker 1 01:22

How exactly do you describe what you are doing at our university?

Speaker 2 01:28

A number of years ago, the university decided to establish a Bachelor's degree program for Sign Language Interpreting for German and German Sign Language. The State of North Rhine-Westphalia is really a center for deaf people, or there is a high concentration of deaf people in this state compared to in Germany as a whole. But there is also a dearth, just not enough, of sign language interpreters. So, they established a program to help counteract this dearth of interpreters. And although I'm not an interpreter myself, I head the program for Sign Language Interpreting and do research on topics to do with sign language linguistics, but also psycholinguistics, so psychology of language or processing of language. I do research in various research projects alongside of heading the degree program.

Speaker 1 02:19

How did you come to be appointed as a professor at the University of Cologne, and what made you say “yes”?

Speaker 2 02:26

The degree program is new. I actually maybe would not have even applied for the job a few years beforehand, because of the fact that it was for sign language interpreting, and I'm not an interpreter myself, my research isn't in the field of interpreting. But then I was talking to a colleague from Magdeburg who reminded me – I had been outside of Germany for so long that I didn't really know the inner workings anymore - that sign language research in Germany is done primarily at universities that have sign language interpreting programs and that the people who head these programs are usually, mainly linguists themselves. And actually, in terms of the timing - I was in the UK at the time - it kind of coincided with Brexit. I wasn't actively looking to get out of the UK, but it was a nice kind of confluence of events. So when this job came up, I thought, well, I have to apply. And I always had this love for Cologne from having studied here. Yeah, so it was this kind of a perfect confluence of events in the end. And, I thought, I have to apply. And then it was successful.

Speaker 1 03:40

And then you got it. Yeah, your main areas of research are very interesting and also socially relevant. Please tell us a little bit more about them.

Speaker 2 03:50

Well, the social relevance, of course, comes also from the interpreting program. We are ensuring, or doing a part to ensure, that deaf people, for their daily lives and for being able to participate in life and society, to go to events, work a broad range of jobs - which wasn't the case in the in the past - to achieve secondary and tertiary education levels: We are helping to make sure that that is possible for a larger number of deaf people by producing, I'll say, sign language interpreters. That, of course, is very squarely socially relevant. And then in terms of my research: it's related to linguistics, which is basic research, maybe not entirely directly applied and directly socially relevant. But, of course, to the extent that it feeds into things like deaf education and also awareness of languages, awareness of cultural and linguistic diversity, and promoting awareness about sign language and deafness, in general, and contributing to improvements in deaf education, it is, I think, socially relevant.

Speaker 1 05:03

Is it difficult to do this kind of research as a hearing person?

Speaker 2 05:08

Deaf people in the deaf community have always experienced discrimination as well as language deprivation as a result of poor decisions in deaf education and education policies. And, as a result, Deaf people are not in positions in terms of their education and access to information to easily get into positions on a level like this at a university. And so I always know that I am in this position because of hearing privilege, and I always know and try to be aware of the fact that I have a responsibility towards Deaf people, the Deaf community, in ways that are possible and available to me, to somehow remediate and to help build better structures and awareness and accessibility.

Speaker 1 06:00

You recently received an ERC Synergy Grant. Congratulations for that.

Speaker 2 06:08

Thank you.

Speaker 1 06:08

Please explain to us what does that mean?

Speaker 2 06:09

The name of the project, or the kind of short name for it is SHAPE, which refers to object shape, basically. When we think about our perception of shape, we think everyone kind of looks at things in the same way and sees things in the same way. But actually our perception of shape and our ability to categorize things based on shape - you know, we see bowls and we're able to identify things as bowls: What makes us say, this is a bowl, that is a bowl, this other thing is also a bowl versus this is a bowl, this is a vase, this is a glass. You know, things that look similar, but yet we have different categories for them. [It's a’out] How things look to us, how we actually visually perceive things, and how we come to have representations of shape and of objects cognitively in our minds, and then how we talk about these things, what kinds of things are in our language that somehow encode shape, or where shape is relevant. Like in German, for example, we have to know something about the shape of something in order to be able to say how it's positioned: We say that ‘A book lies on the table’, or ‘A book stands on the table’(Das Buch steht oder liegt auf dem Tisch). And so that means we have to be paying attention to properties about object shape to be able to say that in the right way. Languages across the world differ a lot in the way that shape gets into their grammatical structures and into their lexicon. And so what we're looking at in this Synergy project is this relation between visual perception of object shape, cognitive representation of object shape and linguistic encoding of object shape, and how they interact and influence each other, the kind of directionalities of influence across these domains. We're looking at 44 different languages across the world, including four sign languages; we're looking longitudinally in terms of language acquisition; we're looking at adults and children; and we're hoping to understand these interactions, these influences, between these three domains.

Speaker 1 08:16

You were born and raised in a bilingual environment. Does that influence you?

Speaker 2 08:22

I mean, I guess! I studied linguistics! Of course, people always say of bilingual children that they have higher metalinguistic awareness. And so, of course, I spent my early years already highly aware of language and differences in language. And I think it must have - yeah, I mean, I carried it with me - it influenced my decision to study linguistics. It must have.

Speaker 1 08:46

Let us have a look at your environment here. So what makes you happy at work?

Speaker 2 08:52

Well, I love my colleagues here, and - back to a question from previously: ‘what made you say yes to come here?’ - especially the environment with respect to Linguistics and Language Sciences and the colleagues here in the Language Sciences and in Linguistics. I mean, it's phenomenal. I love the collegiality. I love the stuff that we're working on together, the research that we're doing, the ideas that we're working on together. I'm in the Department for Special Education, which doesn't really align with my background, so in a way, I kind of don't fit in there. I'm there because sign language is always associated, unfortunately, with Special Education and Disability. But even there, I feel comfortable there. I also have wonderful colleagues there. And it's nice being at a different faculty, promoting cross-faculty research, cross-faculty issues. So it's a very nice situation of kind of having my foot in both doors, in the Faculty of Humanities as well as, obviously, because I'm actually there, in the Faculty of Human Sciences. Just interacting with people from so many different backgrounds and disciplines.

Speaker 1 10:06

And besides of your colleagues, is there something special about working at the University of Cologne?

Speaker 2 10:13

The University of Cologne is a big place, of course. We all know that is one of the biggest universities in Germany and that makes it a big ship to steer. But, just on a personal level, it’s very easy to reach out to people. People are problem-solving for you if you reach out to them with whatever issue you have. So I really feel - I mean, this might also be like a little bit of the Cologne mentality - there's warmth and there is a willingness to help, even an eagerness to help. I've always experienced everybody as very forthcoming. And I've always been able to solve the problems that I have by reaching out, by finding the people that can help me, and then finding solutions for those problems.

Speaker 1 11:01

You spend half of your life at work, at least half of your life at work. So what has to be in it for you so that someday you will be able to say it was worth it?

Speaker 2 11:16

Yeah, well, I mean, I have thought about this question a lot, especially recently, because, you know, I'm getting older, and so I'm starting to see kind of the end of, you know, or…

Speaker 1 11:29

Come on!

Speaker 2 11:29

I'm starting to question - not the end, you can cut that part out! - I’m starting to question seriously how I'm spending my time, and if I'm spending it in a way that, when I retire or in later years, I will look back on this time, I will look back at my time spent working, and think: That was time well spent. I did use my time in a way that I'm happy with, and I have no regrets. I love research. I love my field. It sounds cliché, but you know this thing of ‘It's also my hobby. I would be reading these papers anyway’. But, in a way, it's true, because these are the things that interest you. These are the things that you want to know more about. And so I absolutely love learning and moving forward in my field and creating knowledge, not just for myself, but for the field. And there can be no regret in that, in that sense. I also just love the variability. I mean, I was just focusing on research, but I also love the students, the interaction with students, also PhD students, and the university itself, the colleagues at the university. You know, the whole thing. It's so variable. There are so many different tasks, and I love the variability. Every day is filled with so many different things. It's great.

Speaker 1 12:50

Today we've met Pamela Perniss, Professor of Sign Language Research and Interpreting for German Sign Language at the University of Cologne, and now I would like to ask you. And how about you? Would you like to join us, too?