International Sign (IS) and American Sign Language (ASL) have both been used as lingua francas within international deaf contexts. Perspectives on the uses of IS and ASL as lingua francas in such contexts are connected to discourses pertaining to the form, function, status, value, languageness, and global reach of IS and ASL. While there are some…

This paper discusses language use and identity patterns in ethnic minority/ethnically heterogeneous multigenerational deaf families in Romania, where at least one of the family members belongs to the ethnic Hungarian minority. Early childhood and school linguistic socialization, language use within the family, and cross-generational transmission…

Parents of deaf children must decide whether to raise their child using spoken and/or signed language. Multilingual parents have the additional decision of whether to use multiple spoken languages (with or without a signed language as well). These communication choices -- which can be both explicit and implicit -- can change over time and are…

This paper discusses language use and identity patterns in families set up by deaf partners living in Romania, where at least one of the spouses belongs to the ethnic Hungarian minority. Language use and transmission of identity to children in ethnically homogenous (Hungarian) or heterogeneous (Hungarian--Romanian) families of deaf are explored.…

The African worldview of Ubuntu predates Vygotskian theory, but the Ubuntu view that the community defines the person aligns uncannily with Vygotsky's biosocial proposition and contemporary conceptions of deaf ontology and epistemology. Unlike prevailing Euro-American thought, Ubuntu accentuates the view that it is not any physical or…

Lev Vygotsky (1993) described deaf ontology as dynamic interactions that uniquely but inexorably synthesize biology and society. The "deaf biosocial condition" is a deceptively simple theory. Principally, it clarifies imbricated issues of axiology, power, and knowledge by centering positive adaptive compensations that sublate deafness.…

The article poses questions about which (meta)linguistic discourses and processes take place among Deaf queers in Berlin, Germany: Which topics and reflection processes they deal with?; Which expressions, self-designations, and foreign appellations in sign language do Deaf queers consider as acceptable or as discriminatory?; How can the Deaf-queer…

Aim(s): The number of deaf children and young people (CYP) being educated in inclusive mainstream settings rather than special schools has grown over recent years, however, this has not been without its challenges. This qualitative study aims to address a gap in the research literature by investigating what stakeholders consider to be the…

Diversification of the scientific workforce usually focuses on recruitment and retention of women and underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities but often overlooks deaf and hard-of-hearing (D/HH) persons. Usually classified as a disability group, such persons are often members of their own sociocultural linguistic minority and deserve unique…

This article has been excerpted from "Perspectives on the Sign Language Factor in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges of Sustainability" (Lutalo-Kiingi and De Clerck) in "Sign Language, Sustainable Development, and Equal Opportunities: Envisioning the Future for Deaf Students" (G. A. M. De Clerck and P. V. Paul (Eds.) 2016). In this…

This article has been excerpted from "Introduction: Sign Language, Sustainable Development, and Equal Opportunities" (De Clerck) in "Sign Language, Sustainable Development, and Equal Opportunities: Envisioning the Future for Deaf Students" (G. A. M. De Clerck & P. V. Paul (Eds.) 2016). The idea of exploring various…

This study examined the variation in cultural competence among leaders in four different residential schools for the Deaf across the United States. The study explored where leaders fell on the cultural continuum, and how this was reflected in the schools in the way each perceived and validated Deaf culture as well as other cultures present in the…

During a phenomenological-narrative study regarding the perspectives of leadership among women who are both Native and Deaf, a portion of the data collection focused on visual art as a means of interpreting what leadership meant to the participants. Participants produced visual imagery to impart their ways of knowing as women who negotiated their…

Information and research on Mongolian Sign Language is scant. To date, only one dictionary is available in the United States (Badnaa and Boll 1995), and even that dictionary presents only a subset of the signs employed in Mongolia. The present study describes the kinship system used in Mongolian Sign Language (MSL) based on data elicited from…

A sociolinguistic survey of the sign language used by the deaf communities of Peru was conducted in November and December of 2007. For eight weeks, our survey team visited six deaf communities in the cities of Lima, Arequipa, Cusco, Trujillo, Chiclayo, and Iquitos. Using sociolinguistic questionnaires and recorded text testing (RTT) tools, we…