This collection of papers examines how sign languages are distributed around the world; what occurs when they come in contact with spoken and written languages, and how signers use them in a variety of situations. Each chapter introduces the key issues in a particular area of inquiry and provides a comprehensive review of the literature. The seven…

The five papers included in this volume approach the study of American Indian languages from a diverse array of methodological and theoretical approaches to linguistics. Two papers focus on approaches that come from the applied linguistics tradition, emphasizing ethnolinguistics and discourse analysis: Sonya Bird's paper "A Cross Cultural…