Ethiopian Sign Language utilizes a fingerspelling system that represents Amharic orthography. Just as each character of the Amharic abugida encodes a consonant-vowel sound pair, each sign in the Ethiopian Sign Language fingerspelling system uses handshape to encode a base consonant, as well as a combination of timing, placement, and orientation to…

Research presented here describes the sign names and the customs of name allocation within the British Deaf community. While some aspects of British Sign Language sign names and British Deaf naming customs differ from those in most Western societies, there are many similarities. There are also similarities with other societies outside the more…

Numeral-incorporating roots in the numeral systems of Argentine Sign Language (LSA) and Catalan Sign Language (LSC), as well as the main features of the number systems of both languages, are described and compared. Informants discussed the use of numerals and roots in both languages (in most cases in natural contexts). Ten informants took part in…

A pressing concern in the education of deaf children is their lack of academic success as measured by literacy rates. Most deaf children finish high school reading below a fourth-grade level. Educational television programs have successfully fostered preschool hearing children's emergent literacy skills. As for preschool deaf children, however,…

Educational reform and financial considerations have emphasized accountability and use of research-based materials and strategies in education. Simultaneously, with growing enrollment in elementary, secondary, and postsecondary ASL programs, the number of commercially marketed materials has grown. Do such materials stand up under scrutiny when…

This article centers on the implications of genetic developments (as a scientific and technological discipline) for those Deaf people who identify as a cultural and linguistic minority group and are concerned with the preservation and development of sign language and Deaf culture. We explore the impact of one particular legislative initiative that…

Genetic counseling is part of the social response to the science of genetics. It is intended to help twenty-first-century societies manage the consequences of our ability to observe and intervene in our genetic makeup. This article explores the views, knowledge, and beliefs of some Deaf and hard of hearing people about genetics and genetic…

This article discusses the role of technology in supporting ASL literacy. This attention to technology is part of an exploratory study of Deaf elementary school students participating in an ASL identity text project at a bilingual/bicultural school for Deaf students in Ontario, Canada. This study is a contribution to the cross-Canada…

In this article I consider that attainment research is a knowledge-producing practice that co-creates the realities it studies. Studies aimed at monitoring pupils' educational progress tend to collect those data that are needed to develop research claims, thereby producing an expert catalogue of understanding that is variable and has limited…

In this article we look at the use of ICST in two multilingual and deaf/hearing teams in an educational and research environment. We describe how job demands and job control (decision authority level) contribute to feelings of stress among the deaf and the hearing employees. We find that most information is received by all of the team members in…

In this article we describe an Australian project in which linguists, signed language interpreters, medical and health care professionals, and members of the Deaf community use the technology of the Internet to facilitate cooperative language development. A web-based, interactive multimedia lexicon, an encyclopedic dictionary, and a database of…

Recent technologies in the area of video and Internet are allowing the creation and online publication of large signed language corpora. Primarily addressing the needs of linguists and other researchers, because of their unique character in history these data collections are also made accessible online for a general audience. This "open access"…

Historian Brian Greenwald offers a revisionist interpretation of Bell. He reviews Bell's role and influence within the American eugenics movement and shows that Bell had the respect of the most prominent American eugenicists. His intimate knowledge of deafness, from personal experience with his mother and wife and from his studies of deaf people…

When hearing speakers address a mixed audience of hearing and deaf participants,[1] they have a choice of three methods by which to convey the information in their presentation. They may choose to use English and provide an English-to-ASL interpreter, use ASL and provide an ASL-to-English interpreter, or use simultaneous communication (SimCom).…

This article examines sign languages that belong to a complex of indigenous sign languages in Mesoamerica that K'iche'an Maya people of Guatemala refer to collectively as Meemul Tziij. It explains the relationship between the Meemul Tziij variety of the Yukatek Maya village of Chican (state of Yucatan, Mexico) and the hitherto undescribed Meemul…