This article is based on field research that we conducted in a north Bali school (SLB Bagian B) for deaf students. The study involves documentation of the linguistic environments within which deaf people operate, focusing on the use of sign languages by deaf and hearing people. The following material on policies and practices oriented toward the…

Linguistic descriptions of sign languages are important to the recognition of their linguistic status. These languages are an essential part of the cultural heritage of the communities that create and use them and vital in the education of deaf children. They are also the reference point in language acquisition studies. Ours is exploratory…

In this article, the authors investigate visual and tactile ASL-English interpreters' influences on interactive discourse through an interactional sociolinguistic analysis of videotaped, interpreted interactions. They examine the participation framework of each of the interactions to determine whether the interpreters' utterances influence the…

This article investigates the basis for the frequently reported statement that ten percent of deaf persons are born to families with one or more deaf parents. The prevalence of deaf children born to deaf parents (deaf-of-deaf ) is important because it is often cited when describing linguistic and educational advantages, along with social and…

In this article the linguistic features of three Italian Sign Language (Lingua Italiana dei Segni, or LIS) registers are analyzed focusing on iconic phenomena. Previous treatments of iconicity and motivation in spoken and signed language are discussed. Iconicity is defined as a regular mapping between expressive form and meaning that can be active…

Roy J. Stewart made two very significant contributions to Deaf America. He was a key member of a Gallaudet alumni committee (along with Harley D. Drake, class of 1904, and Frederick H. Hughes, class of 1913) that raised seed money for the construction of the Edward Miner Gallaudet Memorial Library, which was influential in Gallaudet's attaining…

Older citizens who are deaf or hard of hearing recall the years of silent films (1893-1929) as a "golden era" in the cultural history of the American Deaf community. It was golden for several reasons. First, this period represents the one brief time that deaf and hard of hearing citizens had comparatively equal access to motion pictures--a…

The Gallaudet University Archives contains the world's most comprehensive collection of materials relating to the language, history, and culture of deaf people. Photographs, artifacts, personal correspondence, publications, and institutional records form the core of the repository, but the Archives also contains a Deaf film collection of more than…

George Veditz's "The Preservation of the Sign Language" was a popular film about the deaf language. Sixty five years later, in 1977, Veditz's film was retrieved and screened at the opening of a conference on the research and teaching of American Sign Language. Despite the age and the condition of the film, the screening held the audience…

Despite the society's growing understanding of sign languages, particularly American Sign Language (ASL), there is still a profound limitation on the availability of literary, linguistic, historical, and other reference materials related to them because of the lack of a commonly accepted writing system. This article transcribed and analyzed a set…

This article examines the various ways in which deaf people have protected and promoted sign language during the early decades of the twentieth century. Arguing that deaf people played an active role in their own history, the author shows how members of the community--through formal and informal collaboration--ultimately defeated strict oralist…

This article describes the translation goals, challenges, strategies, and solutions employed in the development of a computer-based, self administered, psychiatric diagnostic instrument, the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for the Deaf (D-DIS-IV) in American Sign Language (ASL) with English captions. The article analyzes the impact of the…

Remarkably few studies have examined the outcomes of sign language interpreting. Three experiments reported here examine deaf students' comprehension of interpreting in American Sign Language and English-based signing (transliteration) as a function of their sign language skills and preferences. In Experiments 1 and 2, groups of deaf students…

This article presents the findings of the first linguistic analysis of sign language interpreting carried out in Australia. A study was conducted on 10 Australian Sign Language/English interpreters to determine the rate and occurrence of interpreting omissions and the interpreters' level of metalinguistic awareness in relation to their production…

Discusses the linguistic situation of the deaf and the shift in linguistic ideology from graphocentrism to orocentrism, which forms the scenario in which deaf people are struggling to legitimize their natural form of expression. Questions both graphocentrism and orocentrism and proposes neutral terms and a neutral perspective from which orality…