front cover of ACCESS
ACCESS
Multiple Avenues for Deaf People
Doreen DeLuca
Gallaudet University Press, 2008

The companion to Signs and Voices: Deaf Culture, Identity, Language, and Arts, this volume presents an accomplished group of contributors who address the major technological, institutional, and societal advances in access for deaf people, as well as the remaining hurdles. Part One: Assistive Technologies begins with Maggie Casteel’s description of the latest innovative hearing assistive technology. Al Sonnenstrahl discusses his career as a deaf engineer who segued into advocating for equal access in telecommunications. Robert C. O’Reilly, Amanda J. Mangiardi, and H. Timothy Bunnell outline the process of cochlear implantation in children.

Jami N. Fisher and Philip J. Mattiacci open Part Two: Education and Literacy by examining civil rights issues in education. Michael Stinson considers the conflict that inclusion creates in developing a deaf identity. Lisa Herbert discusses her identity as a signing deaf person who also has a cochlear implant. Grace Walker focuses on her experiences with a cochlear implant that eventually led her to stop using it.

In the final section, Part Three: Civil Rights, Christy Hennessey describes her work as an advocate and job placement counselor with deaf and hard of hearing people. Tony Saccente discusses HIV/AIDs counseling to the deaf gay community. Leila Monaghan follows by reviewing recent studies of deaf attitudes towards HIV/AIDs. Greg Hlibok concludes with his commentary on leading the Deaf President Now! movement and its subsequent effects on deaf civil rights.

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The American Sign Language Handshape Puzzle Book
Linda Lascelle Hillebrand
Gallaudet University Press, 2005

The American Sign Language Handshape Puzzle Book features 54 different puzzles to help students learn, review, and strengthen their signing vocabulary. Inspired by the bestselling dictionary, this unique workbook offers a variety of puzzles at three different levels — easy, medium, and difficult. Author Linda Lascelle Hillebrand provides a concise explanation of the basic handshapes used in American Sign Language (ASL), then invites readers to have fun while solving all sorts of sign puzzles.

Users can practice sign identification with Crossword and Word Search puzzles that have signs as clues rather than words. Easy puzzles show as few as six signs while advanced puzzles contain as many as 30 signs each. Some of the crossword puzzles provide spaces both across and down for the multiple meanings that many signs can represent.

Handshape Order puzzles require users to identify the handshape of the sign in an illustration, then list the sign’s meaning in English. Match puzzles also challenge readers to find corresponding signs for English glosses. Solutions to It Doesn’t Belong and Sign Description puzzles depend upon knowing the parameters of ASL signs—handshape, orientation, location, and movement—to deduce which word in a list doesn’t belong, and to write the English word for the described signs. The American Sign Language Handshape Puzzle Book is a new, different, and entertaining way to practice ASL that students of all ages are sure to enjoy.

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Bilingual Deaf and Hearing Families
Narrative Interviews
Barbara Bodner-Johnson
Gallaudet University Press, 2012

This study emphasizes the importance of family support for deaf members, particularly through the use of both American Sign Language (ASL) and spoken and/or written English. Research has shown how these factors influence such areas as a child’s development, performance in school, and relationships with brothers and sisters. In this volume, authors Barbara Bodner-Johnson and Beth S. Benedict concentrate on the vital, positive effects of bilingualism and how families that share their experiences with other families can enhance all of their children’s achievement and enrichment.

       Bilingual Deaf and Hearing Families: Narrative Interviews describes the experiences of ten families who have at least one deaf family member. In five of the families, the parents are hearing and they have a deaf child; two of the children in these families have cochlear implants. In three families, both the parents and children are deaf. In one family, the parents are deaf and their daughter is hearing; and in one family, the parents and one child are deaf and they all have cochlear implants, and the deaf child’s twin is hearing.

       The interviews were conducted in the families’ homes using set topics and questions. The family discussions cover a wide range of subjects: cochlear implants, where they live, their thoughts about family relationships, how they participate in the Deaf community, how they arrive at certain decisions, their children’s friendships, and the goals and resiliencies they have as a family.

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front cover of Bilingualism and Identity in Deaf Communities
Bilingualism and Identity in Deaf Communities
Melanie Metzger
Gallaudet University Press, 2000

Is perception reality? Editor Melanie Metzger investigates the cultural perceptions by and of deaf people around the world in Bilingualism and Identity in Deaf Communities.

       “All sociocultural groups offer possible solutions to the dilemma that a deaf child presents to the larger group,” write Claire Ramsey and Jose Antonio Noriega in their essay, “Ninos Milagrizados: Language Attitudes, Deaf Education, and Miracle Cures in Mexico.” In this case, Ramsey and Noriega analyze cultural attempts to “unify” deaf children with the rest of the community. Other contributors report similar phenomena in deaf communities in New Zealand, Nicaragua, and Spain, paying particular attention to how society’s view of deaf people affects how deaf people view themselves.

       A second theme pervasive in this collection, akin to the questions of perception and identity, is the impact of bilingualism in deaf communities. Peter C. Hauser offers a study of an American child proficient in both ASL and Cued English while Annica Detthow analyzes “transliteration” between Spoken Swedish and Swedish Sign Language. Like its predecessors, this sixth volume of the Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities series distinguishes itself by the depth and diversity of its research, making it a welcome addition to any scholar’s library.

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front cover of Deaf Empowerment
Deaf Empowerment
Emergence, Struggle, and Rhetoric
Kathy Jankowski
Gallaudet University Press, 1997
Employing the methodology successfully used to explore other social movements in America, this meticulous study examines the rhetorical foundation that motivated Deaf people to work for social change during the past two centuries. In clear, concise prose, Jankowski begins by explaining her use of the term social movement in relation to the desire for change among Deaf people and analyzes the rhetoric they used, not limited to spoken language, to galvanize effective action.

     Central to Deaf Empowerment is the struggle between the dominant hearing society and Deaf people over the best means of communication, with the educational setting as the constant battleground. This evocative work first tracks the history of interaction between these two factions, highlighting the speaking majority’s desire to compel Deaf people to conform to “the human sciences” conventionality by learning speech. Then, it sharply focuses on the development of the Deaf social movement's ideology to seek general recognition of sign language as a valid cultural variation. Also, the influence of social movements of the 60s and 70s is examined in relation to the changing context and perception of the Deaf movement, as well as to its rhetorical refinement.

     Deaf Empowerment delineates the apex of effective Deaf rhetoric in describing the success of the Deaf President Now! protest at Gallaudet University in 1988, its aftermath, and ensuing strategies. It concludes with an assessment of the goal of a multicultural society and offers suggestions for community building through a new humanitarianism. Scholars of social movements and Deaf studies will find it to be a uniquely provocative addition to their libraries and classrooms.
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The Deaf Mute Howls
Albert Ballin
Gallaudet University Press, 1998

Originally published in 1930, The Deaf Mute Howls flew in the face of the accepted practice of teaching deaf children to speak and read lips while prohibiting the use of sign language. The sharp observations in Albert Ballin’s remarkable book detail his experiences (and those of others) at a late 19th-century residential school for deaf students and his frustrations as an adult seeking acceptance in the majority hearing society.

       The Deaf Mute Howls charts the ambiguous attitudes of deaf people toward themselves at this time. Ballin himself makes matter-of-fact use of terms now considered disparaging, such as “deaf-mute,” and he frequently rues the “atrophying” of the parts of his brain necessary for language acquisition. At the same time, he rails against the loss of opportunity for deaf people, and he commandingly shifts the burden of blame to hearing people unwilling to learn the “Universal Sign Language,” his solution to the communication problems of society. From his lively encounters with Alexander Graham Bell (whose desire to close residential schools he surprisingly supports) to his enthrallment with the film industry, Ballin’s highly readable book offers an appealing look at the deaf world during his richly colored lifetime.

[more]

front cover of Discovering Sign Language
Discovering Sign Language
Laura Greene
Gallaudet University Press, 1981
Children learn about different kinds of hearing loss, different sign systems, and the evolution of sign language in other countries, sign language games, and "How the Seasons Came to Be," a story in sign.
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front cover of Forbidden Signs
Forbidden Signs
American Culture and the Campaign against Sign Language
Douglas C. Baynton
University of Chicago Press, 1996
Forbidden Signs explores American culture from the mid-nineteenth century to 1920 through the lens of one striking episode: the campaign led by Alexander Graham Bell and other prominent Americans to suppress the use of sign language among deaf people.

The ensuing debate over sign language invoked such fundamental questions as what distinguished Americans from non-Americans, civilized people from "savages," humans from animals, men from women, the natural from the unnatural, and the normal from the abnormal. An advocate of the return to sign language, Baynton found that although the grounds of the debate have shifted, educators still base decisions on many of the same metaphors and images that led to the misguided efforts to eradicate sign language.

"Baynton's brilliant and detailed history, Forbidden Signs, reminds us that debates over the use of dialects or languages are really the linguistic tip of a mostly submerged argument about power, social control, nationalism, who has the right to speak and who has the right to control modes of speech."—Lennard J. Davis, The Nation

"Forbidden Signs is replete with good things."—Hugh Kenner, New York Times Book Review
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front cover of From Gesture to Language in Hearing and Deaf Children
From Gesture to Language in Hearing and Deaf Children
Virginia Volterra
Gallaudet University Press, 1994
In 21 essays on communicative gesturing in the first two years of life, this vital collection demonstrates the importance of gesture in a child’s transition to a linguistic system. Introductions preceding each section emphasize the parallels between the findings in these studies and the general body of scholarship devoted to the process of spoken language acquisition.

Renowned scholars contributing to this volume include Ursula Bellugi, Judy Snitzer Reilly, Susan Goldwin-Meadow, Andrew Lock, M. Chiara Levorato, and many others.
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front cover of Get Your Elbow Off the Horn
Get Your Elbow Off the Horn
Stories through the Years
Jack R. Gannon
Gallaudet University Press, 2020
Get Your Elbow Off the Horn is a collection of interactions and observations written by Jack R. Gannon, a lifelong advocate for the Deaf community. Warm and amusing, Gannon’s stories begin with his rural childhood in the Ozarks and continue through his experiences as a student, educator, coach, husband, parent, and community leader. These vignettes reveal a down-to-earth family man who believed in making a difference one person at a time.

       Many of his recollections are brief sketches that reveal much about being Deaf—and about being human. From reflecting on the difficult choices parents must make for their children, to recounting awkward communication exchanges, Gannon marries good humor with a poignant advocacy for sign language rights. His stories preserve and share Deaf American life and culture as he experienced it.
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front cover of The Human Right to Language
The Human Right to Language
Communication Access for Deaf Children
Lawrence Siegel
Gallaudet University Press, 2008

In 1982, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Amy Rowley, a deaf six-year-old, was not entitled to have a sign language interpreter in her public school classroom. Lawrence Siegel wholeheartedly disagrees with this decision in his new book The Human Right to Language: Communication Access for Deaf Children. Instead, he contends that the United States Constitution should protect every deaf and hard of hearing child’s right to communication and language as part of an individual’s right to liberty. Siegel argues that when a deaf or hard of hearing child sits alone in a crowded classroom and is unable to access the rich and varied communication around her, the child is denied any chance of success in life.

In The Human Right to Language, Siegel proposes that the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution be enforced so that Amy Rowley and her peers can possess that which virtually every other American child takes for granted – the right to receive and express thought in school. He asserts that the common notion of a right to “speech” is too infrequently interpreted in the narrowest sense as the right to “speak” rather than the broader right to receive and transmit information in all ways. Siegel reveals that there are no judicial decisions or laws that recognize this missing right, and offers here a legal and constitutional strategy for change. His well-reasoned hypothesis and many examples of deaf children with inadequate communication access in school combine to make a compelling case for changing the status quo.

[more]

front cover of I Fill This Small Space
I Fill This Small Space
The Writings of a Deaf Activist
Lawrence Newman
Gallaudet University Press, 2009

Lawrence Newman became deaf at the age of five in 1930, and saw his father fight back tears knowing that his son would never hear again. The next time he saw his father cry was in 1978, when Newman received an honorary doctorate from Gallaudet University, his alma mater. Newman was recognized for his achievements as a life-long advocate for deaf education, including receiving California’s Teacher of the Year award in 1968. Perhaps his greatest influence, however, stemmed from his many articles and columns that appeared in various publications, the best of which are featured in I Fill This Small Space: The Writings of a Deaf Activist.

Editor David Kurs has organized Newman’s writings around his passions — deaf education, communication and language, miscellaneous columns and poems on Deaf life, and humorous insights on his activism. His articles excel both as seamless arguments supporting his positions and as windows on the historical conflicts that he fought: against the Least Restrictive Environment in favor of residential deaf schools; for sign language, Total Communication, and bilingual education; and as a deaf teacher addressing parents of deaf children. A gifted writer in all genres, Newman amuses with ease (“On Mini and Midi-Skirts”), and moves readers with his heartfelt verse (“Girl with a Whirligig”). Newman ranges wide in his ability, but he always maintains his focus on equal tights for deaf people, as he demonstrates in his title poem “I Fill This Small Space:”

I fill this small space, this time
Who is to say yours is better
Than mine or mine yours

[more]

front cover of Indian Sign Language
Indian Sign Language
A Linguistic Analysis of Its Grammar
Samar Sinha
Gallaudet University Press, 2017

Samar Sinha presents pioneering research into the grammatical properties of Indian Sign Language (ISL), a language used by members of the Deaf community in India. This detailed and well-illustrated study describes the grammar of ISL and is supplemented by comparative and theoretical analyses in the core areas of sublexical structure, morphology, and syntax. Sinha offers a field-based, comprehensive analysis that covers topics such as

                      o   sign formation parameters
                      o   syllable structure
                      o   sonority hierarchy
                      o   semantics of space
                      o   pluralization strategies
                      o   phi-features
                      o   indexing and localization
                      o   agreement
                      o   word order

               He provides a description of the Indian Deaf community that serves to frame his analysis of ISL and highlights the need for greater awareness and acknowledgment of the language and its users. The lack of research on ISL in Indian academia has slowed efforts toward the standardization of ISL and the development of pedagogical materials. This work adds to the growing understanding of natural human language in general and ISL in particular. It also contributes to the empowerment of the Deaf community in India and will strengthen the efforts carried out by d/Deaf activists and researchers.

[more]

front cover of Issues Unresolved
Issues Unresolved
New Perspectives on Language and Deaf Education
Amatzia Weisel
Gallaudet University Press, 1998
Of the more than 400 studies presented at the 18th International Congress on Education of the Deaf, the 20 most incisive papers were selected, rewritten, and edited to construct the trenchant volume Issues Unresolved: New Perspectives on Language and Deaf Education. The resulting book provocatively challenges the invested reader in four critical areas of deaf education worldwide.

Part 1, Communication: Signed and Spoken Languages, addresses matters that range from considering critical periods for language acquisition, researched by Susan D. Fischer, to assessing the impact of immigration policies on the ethnic composition of Australia’s deaf community, intriguing work by Jan Branson and Don Miller.

Part 2, Communication: Accessibility to Speech, continues the debate with works on the perception of speech by deaf and hard of hearing children, contributed by Arthur Boothroyd, and automatic speech recognition and its applications, delineated by Harry Levitt.

Educational issues are brought to the forefront in Part 3 in such engrossing studies as Lea Lurie and Alex Kozulin’s discourse on the application of an instrumental-enrichment cognitive intervention program with deaf immigrant children from Ethiopia. Stephen Powers offers another perspective in this section with his retrospective evaluation of a distance education training course for teachers of the deaf.

Part 4, Psychological and Social Adjustment reviews progress in this area, with Anne de Klerk’s exposition on the Rotterdam Deaf Awareness Program, and Corinne J. Lewkowitz and Lynn S. Liben’s research on the development of deaf and hearing children’s sex-role attitudes and self-endorsements. These and the many other contributions by renowned international scholars in the field make Issues Unresolved a compelling new standard for all involved in deaf education.
 
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front cover of Language Policy and Planning for Sign Languages
Language Policy and Planning for Sign Languages
Timothy G. Reagan
Gallaudet University Press, 2010

This volume addresses the burgeoning need for language policy and language planning for the sign languages used by deaf people. Author Timothy Reagan writes for two audiences in his new book, those who know language policy and language planning but not the Deaf World, and those well-versed in the Deaf cultural community but unfamiliar with language planning studies. To begin, Chapter 1 presents an overview of the Deaf World and a brief introduction to sign language in general. The second chapter outlines a broad overview of language policy and language planning studies both as an academic discipline and an applied type of social engineering.

     In Chapter 3, Reagan examines the specifics of American Sign Language in terms of the history of language policy and planning from the nineteenth century to the post-Congress of Milan period and its form in recent years. The fourth chapter critically examines the creation of manual codes used in deaf education in the U.S. and elsewhere. Chapter 5 analyzes language policy and planning in settings around the world, and the final chapter recommends steps and methods for future language policy and planning efforts for sign language. The cohesive rationale offered in Language Policy and Planning for Sign Languages will prove to be invaluable to all administrators and educators working with populations that use sign languages.


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front cover of Lend Me Your Ear
Lend Me Your Ear
Brenda Jo Brueggemann
Gallaudet University Press, 1999
The tradition of rhetoric established 2,500 years ago emphasizes the imperative of speech as a defining characteristic of reason. But in her new book Lend Me Your Ear, Brenda Jo Brueggemann exposes this tradition’s effect of disallowing deaf people human identity because of their natural silence.

     Brueggemann’s assault upon this long-standing rhetorical conceit is both erudite and personal; she writes both as a scholar and as a hard-of-hearing woman. In this broadly based study, she presents a profound analysis and understanding of this rhetorical tradition’s descendent disciplines (e.g., audiology, speech/language pathology) that continue to limit deaf people. Next to this even-handed scholarship, she juxtaposes a volatile emotional counterpoint achieved through interviews with Deaf individuals who have faced rhetorically constructed restrictions, and interludes of her own poetry and memoirs.

     The energized structure of Lend Me Your Ear galvanizes new thought on the rhetoric surrounding Deaf people by posing basic questions from a rhetorical context: How is deafness constructed as a disability, pathology, or culture through the institutions of literacy education and science/technology, and how do these constructions fit with those of deaf people themselves? The rhetoric of deafness as pathology is associated with the conventional medical and scientific establishments, and literacy education fosters deafness as disability, both dependent upon the premise that speech drives communication. This kinetic study demands consideration of deafness in terms of the rhetoric of Deaf culture, American Sign Language (ASL), and the political activism of Deaf people. Brueggemann argues strenuously and successfully for a reevaluation of the speech model of rhetoric in light of the singular qualities of ASL poetry, a genre that adds the dimension of space and is not disembodied. Ironically, without a word being spoken or printed, ASL poetry returns to the fading, prized oral tradition of poets such as Homer. The speech imperative in traditional rhetoric also fails to present rhetorical forms for listening, or a rhetoric of silence. These and other break-out concepts introduced in Lend Me Your Ear that will stimulate scholars and students of rhetoric, language, and Deaf studies to return to this intriguing work again and again.
[more]

front cover of Made to Hear
Made to Hear
Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children
Laura Mauldin
University of Minnesota Press, 2016

A mother whose child has had a cochlear implant tells Laura Mauldin why enrollment in the sign language program at her daughter’s school is plummeting: “The majority of parents want their kids to talk.” Some parents, however, feel very differently, because “curing” deafness with cochlear implants is uncertain, difficult, and freighted with judgment about what is normal, acceptable, and right. Made to Hear sensitively and thoroughly considers the structure and culture of the systems we have built to make deaf children hear.

Based on accounts of and interviews with families who adopt the cochlear implant for their deaf children, this book describes the experiences of mothers as they navigate the health care system, their interactions with the professionals who work with them, and the influence of neuroscience on the process. Though Mauldin explains the politics surrounding the issue, her focus is not on the controversy of whether to have a cochlear implant but on the long-term, multiyear undertaking of implantation. Her study provides a nuanced view of a social context in which science, technology, and medicine are trusted to vanquish disability—and in which mothers are expected to use these tools. Made to Hear reveals that implantation has the central goal of controlling the development of the deaf child’s brain by boosting synapses for spoken language and inhibiting those for sign language, placing the politics of neuroscience front and center.

Examining the consequences of cochlear implant technology for professionals and parents of deaf children, Made to Hear shows how certain neuroscientific claims about neuroplasticity, deafness, and language are deployed to encourage compliance with medical technology.


[more]

front cover of Manual Communication
Manual Communication
Implications for Education
Harry Bornstein
Gallaudet University Press, 1990
Manual Communication: Implications for Education offers the first authoritative examination of sign systems used in the education of deaf students. Professionals, teachers, and parents will appreciate the individual, expert explanations of: American Sign Language Pidgin Sign (Contact Sign) Signed English Signing Exact English Cued Speech. The descriptions by the acknowledged designer, administrator, or scholar of each system ensures the highest accuracy and thoroughness, distinguishing Manual Communication as a significant, important resource. The first chapter recounts the history of sign language, particularly American Sign Language (ASL), including foreign influences and conflicts about its use. An overview follows, describing factors that affect manual communication, such as learner characteristics. Also, an analysis of a nationwide survey of teachers shows the results of their use of the various forms of manual communication in different settings. Harry Bornstein, former Director of the Gallaudet Signed English Project, is now a consultant living in San Francisco, CA.
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front cover of Mother Father Deaf
Mother Father Deaf
Living between Sound and Silence
Paul Preston
Harvard University Press, 1994

“Mother father deaf” is the phrase commonly used within the Deaf community to refer to hearing children of deaf parents. These children grow up between two cultures, the Hearing and the Deaf, forever balancing the worlds of sound and silence. Paul Preston, one of these children, takes us to the place where Deaf and Hearing cultures meet, where families like his own embody the conflicts and resolutions of two often opposing world views.

Based on 150 interviews with adult hearing children of deaf parents throughout the United States, Mother Father Deaf examines the process of assimilation and cultural affiliation among a population whose lives incorporate the paradox of being culturally “Deaf” yet functionally hearing. It is rich in anecdote and analysis, remarkable for its insights into a family life normally closed to outsiders.

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front cover of Never the Twain Shall Meet
Never the Twain Shall Meet
Bell, Gallaudet, and the Communications Debate
Richard Winefield
Gallaudet University Press, 1987
Throughout the last two centuries, a controversial question has plagued the field of education of the deaf: should sign language be used to communicate with and instruct deaf children? Never the Twain Shall Meet focuses on the debate over this question, especially as it was waged in the nineteenth century, when it was at its highest pitch and the battle lines were clearly drawn. In addition to exploring Alexander Graham Bell's and Edward Miner Gallaudet's familial and educational backgrounds, Never the Twain Shall Meet looks at how their views of society affected their philosophies of education and how their work continues to influence the education of deaf students today.
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front cover of The Other Side of Silence
The Other Side of Silence
Sign Language and the Deaf Community in America
Arden Neisser
Gallaudet University Press, 1983

Arden Neisser’s classic book on American Sign Language (ASL) and the Deaf community is again available, with a new prologue. The Other Side of Silence explores the Deaf community through telling interviews and research from across the country.

       In widely varying encounters, Neisser heard Deaf individuals recall how their teachers suppressed ASL, how linguists foster conflicting theories, and how various institutions of the deaf dilute ASL to suit hearing patrons. This seminal book reveals the warmth, creativity, and resilience of Deaf people, and offers an update of the community today.

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Partners in Education
Issues and Trends from the 21st International Congress on the Education of the Deaf
Donald F. Moores
Gallaudet University Press, 2011

The 21st International Congress on the Education of the Deaf (ICED) witnessed revolutionary exchanges on the vital themes in education. Presenters addressed topics encompassing seven major strands: Educational Environments, Language and Literacy, Early Intervention, Unique Challenges in Developing Countries, Educating Learners with Diverse Needs, Technology in Education, and Sign Language and Deaf Culture. These presentations and ensuing dialogues raised many complex questions. Partners in Education: Issues and Trends from the 21st International Congress on the Education of the Deaf features all of the keynote addresses by renowned luminaries in deaf education: Breda Carty, Karen Ewing, Nassozi Kiyaga, John Luckner, Connie Mayer and Beverly Trezek, volume editor Donald F. Moores, Peter V. Paul, Antti Raike, Claudine Storbeck, James Tucker, and Alys Young.

Most critically, the contributors to this collection explore the many multifaceted challenges facing the world’s deaf students. Deaf children are being diagnosed with overlays of disabilities; more deaf children are growing up in poverty; and many deaf children represent minority racial/ethnic groups or are immigrants to their country of residence. The situation for deaf individuals in the most impoverished countries of the world is desperate and of crisis proportions. This volume brings these themes to light through its exceptional synthesis of the outstanding discourse that took place at ICED 2010, including abstracts from 30 celebrated conference presentations.

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Primary Movement in Sign Languages
A Study of Six Languages
Donna Jo Napoli
Gallaudet University Press, 2011

Is it possible to identify sign languages by their prosody, that is, the rhythm and stress of sign production, and then determine if they are related to each other or other sign languages? If so, reasoned authors Donna Jo Napoli, Mark Mai, and Nicholas Gaw, perhaps they could offer such identification as a new way to typologize, or categorize sign languages by their structural features. Their new collaboration Primary Movement in Sign Languages: A Study of Six Languages traces the process and findings from this unique investigation.

Resolving on the direction of movement as the prosodic factor to track, they began their research by comparing five sign languages: American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language (BSL), Italian Sign Language (LIS), French Sign Language (LSF), and Australian Sign Language (Auslan). They soon discovered that the languages in their study clustered with respect to several characteristics along genetic lines, with BSL and Auslan contrasting with LSF, LIS, and ASL. They learned that sign languages with the same geographic origin evolved differently when relocated, and they isolated differences in each individual sign language. They compared four of these established sign languages with the newly emerging Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), with the exception of ASL due to their past close contact, thereby validating their work as the first study to identify sign language relationships without depending on grammar.

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front cover of Reading Victorian Deafness
Reading Victorian Deafness
Signs and Sounds in Victorian Literature and Culture
Jennifer Esmail
Ohio University Press, 2013

Winner of the 2013 Sonya Rudikoff Award for best first book in Victorian Studies
Short-listed for the 2013 British Society for Literature and Science Book Prize.

Reading Victorian Deafness is the first book to address the crucial role that deaf people, and their unique language of signs, played in Victorian culture. Drawing on a range of works, from fiction by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, to poetry by deaf poets and life writing by deaf memoirists Harriet Martineau and John Kitto, to scientific treatises by Alexander Graham Bell and Francis Galton, Reading Victorian Deafness argues that deaf people’s language use was a public, influential, and contentious issue in Victorian Britain.

The Victorians understood signed languages in multiple, and often contradictory, ways: they were objects of fascination and revulsion, were of scientific import and literary interest, and were considered both a unique mode of human communication and a vestige of a bestial heritage. Over the course of the nineteenth century, deaf people were increasingly stripped of their linguistic and cultural rights by a widespread pedagogical and cultural movement known as “oralism,” comprising mainly hearing educators, physicians, and parents.

Engaging with a group of human beings who used signs instead of speech challenged the Victorian understanding of humans as “the speaking animal” and the widespread understanding of “language” as a product of the voice. It is here that Reading Victorian Deafness offers substantial contributions to the fields of Victorian studies and disability studies. This book expands current scholarly conversations around orality, textuality, and sound while demonstrating how understandings of disability contributed to Victorian constructions of normalcy. Reading Victorian Deafness argues that deaf people were used as material test subjects for the Victorian process of understanding human language and, by extension, the definition of the human.

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Sign Language Interpreting
Deconstructing the Myth of Neutrality
Melanie Metzger
Gallaudet University Press, 1998
As with all professional interpreters, sign language interpreters strive to achieve the proper protocol of complete objectivity and accuracy in their translation without influencing the interaction in any way. Yet, Melanie Metzger's significant work Sign Language Interpreting: Deconstructing the Myth of Neutrality demonstrates clearly that the ideal of an interpreter as a neutral language conduit does not exist. Metzger offers evidence of this disparity by analyzing two videotaped ASL-English interpreted medical interviews, one an interpreter-trainee mock interview session, and the other an actual encounter between a deaf client and a medical professional.

          Sign Language Interpreting relies upon an interactional sociolinguistic approach to ask fundamental questions regarding interpreter neutrality. First, do interpreters influence discourse, and if so, how? Also, what kind of expectations do the participants bring to the event, and what do the interpreters bring to discussions? Finally, how do their remarks affect their alignment with participants in the interaction? Using careful assessments of how these interviews were framed, and also re-interviewing the participants for their perspectives, this penetrating book discloses the ways in which interpreters influence these situations. It also addresses the potential implications of these findings regarding sign language interpretation in medical, educational, and all other general interactions. Interpreter trainers and their students will join certified interpreters and Deaf studies scholars in applauding and benefiting from the fresh ground broken by this provocative study.
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front cover of Signing and Belonging in Nepal
Signing and Belonging in Nepal
Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway
Gallaudet University Press, 2016
While many deaf organizations around the world have adopted an ethno-linguistic framing of deafness, the meanings and consequences of this perspective vary across cultural contexts, and relatively little scholarship exists that explores this framework from an anthropological perspective.
     In this book, Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway presents an accessible examination of deafness in Nepal. As a linguistic anthropologist, she describes the emergence of Nepali Sign Language and deaf sociality in the social and historical context of Nepal during the last decades before the Hindu Kingdom became a secular republic. She then shows how the adoption of an ethno-linguistic model interacted with the ritual pollution model, or the prior notion that deafness results from bad karma. Her focus is on the impact of these competing and co-existing understandings of deafness on three groups: signers who adopted deafness as an ethnic identity, homesigners whose ability to adopt that identity is hindered by their difficulties in acquiring Nepali Sign Language, and hearing Nepalis who interact with Deaf signers. Comparing these contexts demonstrates that both the ethno-linguistic model and the ritual pollution model, its seeming foil, draw on the same basic premise: that both persons and larger social formations are mutually constituted through interaction. Signing and Belonging in Nepal is an ethnography that studies a rich and unique Deaf culture while also contributing to larger discussions about social reproduction and social change.
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front cover of Sign-Me-Fine
Sign-Me-Fine
Laura Greene
Gallaudet University Press, 1989
Written for young adults, Sign-Me-Fine introduces American Sign Language (ASL) and emphasizes how its structure differs from English. Young readers will learn grammatically correct ASL sentences, sign games, and the full beauty of ASL in poetry and music.
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Signs Across America
Edgar H. Shroyer
Gallaudet University Press, 1984
Signs Across America provides a fascinating and unique look at regional variations in American Sign Language. The authors contacted native signers in 25 states to find out their signs for 130 selected words. The results—more than 1,200 signs—are illustrated in this book. It is an invaluable reference for teachers of American Sign Language that explores the subtle differences in signs from different geographic areas.
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Signs and Voices
Deaf Culture, Identity, Language, and Arts
Kristin A. Lindgren
Gallaudet University Press, 2008

Cochlear implants, mainstreaming, genetic engineering, and other ethical dilemmas  confronting deaf people mandated a new, wide-ranging examination of these issues, fulfilled by Signs and Voices: Deaf Culture, Identity, Language, and Arts. This collection, carefully chosen from the 2004 Signs and Voices Conference, the Presidential Forum on American Sign Language at the Modern Language Association Convention, and other sources, addresses all of the factors now changing the cultural landscape for deaf people. To ensure quality and breadth of knowledge, editors Kristin A. Lingren, Doreen DeLuca, and Donna Jo Napoli selected the work of renowned scholars and performers Shannon Allen, H-Dirksen L. Bauman, Adrian Blue, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, Peter Cook, David P. Corina, Michael Davidson, Kristen Harmon, Tom Humphries, Sotaro Kita,  Heather Knapp, Robert G. Lee, Irene W. Leigh, Kenny Lerner, Carole Neidle, Peter Novak, AslI Özyürek, David M. Perlmutter, Anne Senghas, and Ronnie Wilbur.

Signs and Voices is divided into three sections—Culture and Identity, Language and Literacy, and American Sign Language in the Arts—each of which focuses on a particular set of theoretical and practical concerns. Also, the included DVD presents many of the performances from the Arts section. Taken together, these essays and DVD point to new directions in a broad range of fields, including cognitive science, deaf studies, disability studies, education, linguistics, literary criticism, philosophy, and psychology. This extraordinary showcase of innovative and rigorous cross-disciplinary study will prove invaluable to everyone interested in the current state of the Deaf community.

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Storytelling and Conversation
Discourse in Deaf Communities
Elizabeth A. Winston
Gallaudet University Press, 1999

In this intriguing book, renowned sociolinguistics experts explore the importance of discourse analysis, a process that examines patterns of language to understand how users build cooperative understanding in dialogues. It presents discourse analyses of sign languages native to Bali, Italy, England, and the United States.

     Studies of internal context review the use of space in ASL to discuss space, how space in BSL is used to “package” complex narrative tasks, how signers choose linguistic tools to structure storytelling, and how affect, emphasis, and comment are added in text telephone conversations. Inquiries into external contexts observe the integration of deaf people and sign language into language communities in Bali, and the language mixing that occurs between deaf parents and their hearing children.

     Both external and internal contexts are viewed together, first in an examination of applying internal ASL text styles to teaching written English to Deaf students and then in a consideration of the language choices of interpreters who must shift footing to manage the “interpreter’s paradox.” Storytelling and Conversation casts new light on discourse analysis, which will make it a welcome addition to the sociolinguistics canon.


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The Study of Signed Languages
Essays in Honor of William C. Stokoe
David F. Armstrong
Gallaudet University Press, 2002

In 1999, many of today’s notable researchers assembled at a special conference in honor of William C. Stokoe to explore the remarkable research that grew out of his original insights on American Sign Language. The Study of Signed Languages presents the fascinating findings from that conference.

       Part 1, Historical Perspectives, begins with a description of the decline of sign language studies in the 1800s. Past research on signed languages and its relationship to language origins theory follows, along with a consideration of modality and conflicting agendas for its study.

       In Part 2, Language Origins, the first entry intrigues with the possibility that sign language could answer conundrums posed by Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theories. The next essay considers how to build a better language model by citing continuity, ethology, and Stokoe’s work as key elements. Stokoe’s own research on the gestural theory of language origins is examined in the section’s closing chapter.

       Part 3, Diverse Populations, delineates the impact of sign language research on black deaf communities in America, on deaf education, on research into variation in sign language, and even on sign communication and the motor functioning of autistic children and others. In its wide-ranging, brilliant scholarship, The Study of Signed Languages serves as a fitting tribute to William C. Stokoe and his work.

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To the Lexicon and Beyond
Sociolinguistics in European Deaf Communities
Mieke Van Herreweghe
Gallaudet University Press, 2004

Volume 10 of the series explores sociolinguistics in various European Deaf communities. Editors Van Herreweghe and Vermeerbergen present a wide array of research inspired by the Sociolinguistics Symposium 14 held at Ghent University, Belgium, in April 2002. Noted contributors from Finland, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Spain and the United Kingdom offer insights gleaned from the languages of their countries.

Part One of this five-part volume investigates multilingualism and language contact among Finland-Swedish Deaf People. Part Two looks at regional variation and the evolution of signs in Flemish Sign Language, as well as gender-influenced variation in Irish Sign Language. Language policy and planning receives consideration in the third part, with a study of sign language lexical variation in the Netherlands and an analysis of the risks of codification in Flemish Sign Language. Part Four examines the implementation of bilingual programs for deaf students throughout Europe, and updates research on language use visually oriented in Swedish Deaf education classrooms.

The final part of To the Lexicon and Beyond: Sociolinguistics in European Deaf Communities presents data on language attitudes, including a census of sign language users in Spain that reveal a changing language community. The last chapter of this fascinating assembly assays British Deaf communities and language identity in relation to issues of transnationality in the 21st century.

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Total Communication
Structure and Strategy
Lionel Evans
Gallaudet University Press, 1982
Total communication, a method utilizing a combination of visual and auditory cues in an attempt to maximize comprehension, has long been a focus of debate by the deaf community, families of deaf children, and education professionals. For perhaps the first time, this book documents total communication’s historical and philosophical roots and analyzes the strengths and limitations of total communication's elemental parts and their salient linguistic properties.
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front cover of Turn-Taking, Fingerspelling, and Contact in Signed Languages
Turn-Taking, Fingerspelling, and Contact in Signed Languages
Ceil Lucas
Gallaudet University Press, 2002
From Reviewer's Bookwatch, a publication of The Midwest Book Review Compiled and edited by Ceil Lucas, Turn-Taking, Fingerspelling, and Contact in Signed Languages is the eighth volume in the outstanding Gallaudet University Press "Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities series." The ten contributors bring to their work an expertise in their subject matter and an ability to present their material with a careful balance of scholarship and accessibility. The essays include Kristin J. Mulrooney's "Variation in ASL Fingerspelling"; Bruce A. Sofinski's "So, Why Do I Call This English?"; Paul Dudis' "Grounded Blend Maintenance as a Discourse Strategy"; Mieke Van Herreweghe's "Turn-Taking Mechanisms and Active Participation in Meetings with Deaf and Hearing Participants in Flanders." The final article, "Deaf People in Bilingual Speaking Communities: The Case of Deaf People in Bareclona," is the impressive and collaborative work of Esperanza Morales-Lopez, Delfina Agliaga-Emetrio, Jesus Amador Alonso-Rodriguez, Rosa Maria Boldu-Menasanch, Julia Garrusta-Ribes, and Victoria Gras Ferrer. Turn-Taking, Fingerspelling, and Contact in Signed Languages is a welcome and strongly recommended addition to Signing and Sign Language academic reference collections and supplemental reading lists. Ceil Lucas is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Interpretation at Gallaudet University.
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