Research Spotlight: Hungarian Sign Language as a Window into Communication and Culture

That is the world Zsuzsanna Soproni explores in her article on adult learners of Hungarian Sign Language (HSL). The study follows learners who chose to attend HSL courses in their free time, many of whom discovered that learning to sign was not simply another language class, but an encounter with a different way of attending to people, space, culture, and emotion.

We spoke with Zsuzsanna to learn more about Hungarian Sign Language learning and what it can teach researchers, educators, and institutions about access, solidarity, and communication.

At its heart, this article is about access. When hearing people learn sign language, even at an introductory level, they begin to see the barriers that Deaf and hard of hearing people encounter in everyday communication, education, and public life.

The article matters for language education because it treats sign language learning as more than vocabulary acquisition. It shows how learners become more aware of the whole body as a communicative resource, and how sign language classrooms can also become spaces for cultural understanding and social sensitivity.

Soproni reflected on the broader significance of the study: “Schools, universities, educators and decision-makers in education should know that even a short sign language course can help learners get a feel for how a different language works and how a minority community navigates everyday life while living with disabilities.”

Three contributions stand out in Soproni’s account of Hungarian Sign Language learning.

• Learning to sign opened a new cultural world for many participants. Learners described the experience as a new world, a new culture, an adventure, a challenge, and in some cases a dream come true, which suggests that HSL courses can create meaningful contact with Deaf culture and minority language experience.
• HSL learning drew on skills that learners did not fully associate with spoken foreign language learning. The article reports almost no correlation between self-reported success in foreign language learning and self-reported success in sign language learning, and the qualitative comments point to the importance of visual memory, spatial attention, body movement, and the presence of a teacher or fluent signer.
• The courses appeared to change how learners understood their own communication. Respondents reported paying more attention to gestures, articulation, body language, emotions, and eye contact, while video materials, practice, and contact with Deaf people or sign language users emerged as especially important supports for learning.

Looking back on the findings, Soproni noted: “What really opened my eyes was seeing that learning sign language is about much more than acquiring signing skills. Contact between Deaf and hearing people can also foster transferable skills such as intercultural sensitivity, greater self-awareness of, and more effective non-verbal communication.”

The study used a mainly qualitative, naturalistic, and ethnographic approach, with limited quantitative analysis. Data were collected in July and August 2022 through an anonymous online questionnaire completed by 31 adult learners studying Hungarian Sign Language at Siketek és Nagyothallók Országos Szövetsége (SINOSZ), the Hungarian Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, in Budapest.

The questionnaire combined biographical questions, 13 Likert type statements, and 10 open sentence beginnings that invited learners to describe their experience in their own words. Soproni analysed 229 textual comments using the constant comparative method, involved an independent co-coder to reduce researcher bias, and reported descriptive quantitative results to complement the interpretive analysis.

Evidano, at the time named AILYZE, appears in the results and analysis section as part of an exploratory check on one set of open-ended responses. Twenty-seven of the 31 respondents completed the sentence beginning about the most effective method for learning sign language, and Soproni writes that “the free version of the AI tool AILYZE proposed” five themes for those replies: learning environment and attitude, communication and interaction, learning resources, cognitive techniques, and practice methods.

The article is careful not to overstate the AI output. It reports that the tool successfully handled comments in Hungarian, and that the AI analysis pointed to video materials as versatile learning aids, in line with the researcher’s own reading.

In the broader workflow, Evidano functioned as an exploratory aid rather than a replacement for the researcher’s reading, thematic judgement, and comparison with the independent co-coder.

Soproni also noted how AI tools can support careful research workflows when used responsibly: “It was the first time I’d used an AI tool for thematic analysis, and I was genuinely surprised by how well it handled Hungarian. At the same time, researchers need to remember that while AI can speed up and support the analysis process, it still needs careful human oversight.”

For educators, the article suggests that sign language learning can serve both linguistic and civic purposes. It can help learners understand how communication works across visual, spatial, embodied, and cultural dimensions, while also encouraging solidarity with Deaf and hard of hearing communities.

For researchers, the study is a reminder that small qualitative projects can reveal forms of learning that large measures might miss. Learners’ metaphors, comparisons, and descriptions show how they make sense of an unfamiliar communicative world, and why access to practice, videos, and fluent signers matters.

Soproni offered this broader takeaway for readers: “As a lifelong learner and teacher of English, I was fascinated by the potential of sign language learning to enhance non-verbal communication skills that may contribute to both first and second language development. Another key finding was the value of video recordings and smartphones, given the inherent difficulty of note-taking in sign language classes.”

The article ultimately invites readers to see Hungarian Sign Language learning as an opening toward more attentive communication, more inclusive education, and a deeper respect for the linguistic and cultural life of the Deaf community.