Name sign systems have been described in many deaf communities around the world. The most frequent name sign types are associated with an individual's appearance, for example, a signers' hairstyle, clothes, and physical features such as height, weight, etc. However, a recent study that examined name signs in Swedish Sign Language, for example,…

Researchers examining the structure of questions in signed languages, often using elicited data from informants, have proposed that there are specific manual and nonmanual actions produced by signers to indicate different question types (e.g., Zeshan 2004), for example, raised eyebrows for polar questions. In the current study, we add to this body…

There is a dearth of qualitative research concerning deaf people's experiences of participating in the Irish Sign Language (ISL) recognition movement, and this limits our ability to understand the opportunities and constraints they encountered as they negotiated their way toward the passing of the ISL Act 2017. While ISL is unique to Ireland, it…

This article discusses the function of a particular feature of sign language--mouth action--as it is expressed in various discourse contexts. Specifically, we examine forms of mouthing and mouth gesture as they are used in signed narrative and expository texts, highlighting the signers' choices during the production of these two text types. We…

D/deaf children of Deaf parents reportedly begin learning finger-spelling as young as thirteen months old, but deaf children born to hearing, nonsigning parents lack natural access to the native (spoken) language of their families, often exhibiting later language development. Forty-four deaf adults participated in a fingerspelling test of…

While societies have become increasingly dependent on both internet- and information technology-based knowledge retrieval and applications and as social media has become an inextricable aspect of most people's daily lives, a keen interest has emerged regarding the impact that these technologies have on Deaf people's lives. This article describes…

This article follows the often difficult educational path of deaf children in Tanzania, from homes with very little communication to cherished times at deaf (units of) primary schools, through secondary school, which had to be "endured" only, up to work life. It describes challenges and coping strategies, many of which are connected to…

This article traces the origins of Hong Kong Sign Language (hereafter HKSL) and its subsequent development in relation to the establishment of Deaf education in Hong Kong after World War II. We begin with a detailed description of the history of Deaf education with a particular focus on the role of sign language in such development. We then…

British Sign Language has a number of regional variations. This article examines the role of residential schools in the development of sign variants. Citing data collected during interviews with members of the Lancaster and Morecambe Deaf community (who of necessity attended schools elsewhere), it explores the peer-to-peer transmission of sign…

This article argues for the necessity of phonetic analysis in signed language linguistics and presents a case study of one analytical system being used in a preliminary attempt to identify natural classes and investigate variation in ASL handshapes. Robbin Battison (1978) first described what is now a widely accepted list of basic handshapes,…

Hearing children from deaf families, Codas, represent a relatively invisible linguistic and cultural minority. Many hearing people are unaware of the fact that American Sign Language (ASL) is a separate language with its own grammatical structure unlike that of English. This misconception has led to an emphasis on oral education for deaf people in…

Presents study designed to determine whether interruption in the use of the manual encoding modality would retard learning in prelingually deaf subjects. One group of students used finger spelling and finger numeration in learning eight pairs of number-word combinations while the other group used no manual encoding. Results show groups using…

Examined cerebral activation during sign language comprehension in six persons with deafness and nine hearing persons, all of whose parents were deaf. The group with deafness showed more activation than the hearing group in the right parieto-occipital region, indicating that they were more dependent on the spatial components in sign language than…

Interviewed 38 adults with deafness and little schooling in Okinawa concerning their social and language environment. Many of the individuals used an indigenous gestural system shared with hearing people that enabled them to participate in the hearing community. Most had only limited contact with the deaf community and Japanese Sign Language.…

A study tested the hypothesis that manual encoding aids learning in the prelingually deaf. Twenty-four adults who used fingerspelling as their primary means of communication participated in two groups of a paired-associate learning paradigm, using eight study-test trial sequences. Those using fingerspelling showed more recall and a faster learning…