Lending a hand: Competence through cooperation in Nepal’s Deaf associations ERIKA HOFFMANN-DILLOWAY Department of Anthropology, Oberlin College King 320A, 10 North Professor Street Oberlin, OH 44074 erhoffma@oberlin.edu ABSTRACT Since forming contacts with international Deaf associations promoting an ethnolinguistic model of Deafness, members of Nepal’s Deaf associations define Deafness by competence in Nepali Sign Language rather than audio- logical status. By analyzing the ideological and interactional processes through which homesigners are incorporated into Nepali Deaf social life, this article explores the effects of local beliefs about the nature of language, personhood, and competence on this model of Deafness. Due to former lin- guistic isolation, many homesigners are constrained in their ability to acquire Nepali Sign Language and, in social contexts where ideological conceptions of language use highlight individual competencies, would not be included in a Deaf social category. However, Nepali conceptions of socially distributed personhood contribute to a focus on the dialogically emergent dimensions of semiosis. As a result, recognition as a competent signer in this context can depend less on individual cognitive ability than on social collaboration. (d/ Deaf, sign language, competence, language ideologies)* INTRODUCTION One afternoon in 2004, a small man with white hair walked into the main room of Nepal’s National Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Kathmandu. This Deaf-run institution, which served as one of the primary sites for my research on Deaf 1 social networks in Nepal, coordinates eight regional Deaf Associations in their shared mission to promote Nepali Sign Language (NSL) and Deaf rights. I was startled to see this man as, for reasons discussed below, Nepal’s Deaf associ- ations are rarely frequented by anyone over the age of forty-five. Indeed, the associ- ation members with whom I had been spending the afternoon greeted him with excitement, drew my attention to his age by signing, “He’s an elderly Deaf man!”, and suggested that I record his life story. They explained that this man, named Madhu, 2 communicated primarily by means of idiosyncratic gestures, referred to in the literature as HOMESIGNS. © Cambridge University Press, 2011 0047-4045/11 $15.00 285 Language in Society 40, 285–306. doi:10.1017/S0047404511000194