Book Description

This is a selection of papers that have appeared in the journal "Sign Language Studies" between 1972 and 1979. The aim is to provide the reader with some knowledge of the world as signers see it. The book is for academic decision-makers, teachers and parents of deaf students, as well as the intellectually curious. Following an introductory essay, the chapters are arranged in four sections: (1) The first section addresses the broad question "What is Sign Language?" with articles about the language merging situation involving manually encoded English and American Sign Language, as well as other aspects of sign language, including humor and foreign sign languages. (2) The second section on "Learning and Using Sign Language" gets deeply into a psycholinguistic vein, and presents findings on sign language acquisition and learning. (3) The third section, "(Sign) Language and Culture," relates sign language use and particular attitudes and policies to the deaf community. (4) The fourth chapter reinforces the idea that language is not all biological nor all socio-cultural, and applies this idea to sign language acquisition. (Author/PJM)