Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: The Sociolinguistics of Sign Languages is a study published by Cambridge University Press in 2004 and edited by Ceil Lucas who has been teaching a graduate level course entitled Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC since 1980s. When he first started his teaching, there were readings from 1960s and 1970s; however, new studies have been required with the growing importance of sign language community’s needs and empowerment. In the introduction part Lucas states the history of sign language studies, today’s situations and his reflections on the importance of the sociolinguistic research for Deaf communities. In the book, there are six main areas to examine which are multilingualism, bilingualism, sociolinguistic variation, discourse analysis, language planning and policy and language attitudes. The first topic which Woll, Sutto-Spence and Elton deal with is Multilingualism. In this chapter, the global approach to sign languages is discussed. The first issue to be clarified is sign languages used by hearing people. It is widely explained that how hearing people use their sign languages which are different from Deaf communities ’ sign languages. Next, existing languages are discussed and it is said that there are 6.703 languages according to Ethnologue database (Ethnologue database 1996). Mutual intelligibility and problems of nomenclature are the next stated subtopics.
Source: DergiPark (Istanbul University)
Author: Ebru Altın
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1828308426