Second-language learners of American Sign Language (ASL) often struggle in the acquisition of more complex ASL aspects, such as role shift, constructed action, and eye gaze to represent characters and their actions with narratives. These learners also often overestimate their ASL skill level. This study investigated errors in second modality,…

The development of a considerable body of literature on British Sign Language (BSL) now permits analyzing and describing the sociolinguistic history of the language. An impressive amount of sociolinguistic information on BSL pertaining to the United Kingdom (UK) provides rich material for such analysis, but, until now, very little BSL research has…

Lexical variation and change is prevalent in the short history of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) and in the current context of globalized flows of communication we observe growing use of ASL-concordant variants that land in New Zealand via other signed languages, online deaf media, and international interaction. Results from a variant-pair…

In a Dialogue section of the "Journal of Sociolinguistics" (vol. 26, no. 1), author pairs introduce a number of themes and debates in sign language sociolinguistics, explore why these are debates; how the debates are situated within sociolinguistics as a whole; and how spoken language sociolinguistics does or does not have similar…

Maritime Sign Language (MSL) is a Canadian, minority sign language that originally stems from British Sign Language (BSL). Currently used by elderly Deaf people in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland (and Labrador), it is a moribund language, having undergone language shift to American Sign Language (ASL). MSL is…

Nonmanual articulations in sign languages range from being semantically impoverished to semantically rich, and from being independent of manual articulations to coordinated with them. But, while this range has been well noted, certain nonmanuals remain understudied. Of particular interest to us are nonmanual articulations coordinated with manual…

In 1988, members of the American deaf community protested the appointment of a hearing person as the president of Gallaudet University, the world's only university for deaf and hard of hearing students. After a week of protest, the university's board of trustees capitulated and bowed to all the protester's demands. As the protesters engaged in a…

Research on translanguaging practices of Deaf people have shown their creative multimodal resources to communicate (Kusters 2017; Holmström and Schönström 2017; Moriarty Harrelson 2017). These findings have enlightened disciplines like sociolinguistics and bilingual education and can be equally important for policy makers who make decisions that…

This article explores current creative practices involving the representation of sign languages, sign language interpreting, sign language translation (Napier and Leeson 2016; HBB4ALL 2017; CNLSE 2017; Tamayo 2022), and sign language live translation (Tamayo 2022) in audiovisual content. To that end, a review of the concept "creative sign…

This longitudinal pilot study examined the pointing behavior of two Israeli Deaf mothers and one hearing mother over the course of their infant's signed/spoken language acquisition. Three aspects were analyzed: (a) frequency of use; (b) function; and (c) pointing form. The findings indicated that the Deaf mothers used pointing more frequently than…

This study examined the corrective feedback Deaf teachers used to target handshape, movement, and place-of-articulation errors in introductory American Sign Language (ASL) classes for hearing students. Although feedback is underresearched in bimodal second language (M2-L2) pedagogy, there is some evidence that teacher practices may differ from…

This study examined the extended discourse used by two Deaf parents with their two Deaf children (ages two and four). The study was conducted using an in-depth examination of parental expressive use of American Sign Language, looking at the use of discourse and the features and contexts that offered the most opportunity for rich language…

Eng and Chang Bunker (1811--1874) were conjoined twins of Chinese ethnicity born in Siam (today, Thailand). Before the Civil War, they toured the United States to exhibit themselves as a "human curiosity," a wonder of nature, their conjoined state documented by local doctors at each stop on their tours, and their exhibition touted as…

This article follows the often difficult educational path of deaf children in Tanzania, from homes with very little communication to cherished times at deaf (units of) primary schools, through secondary school, which had to be "endured" only, up to work life. It describes challenges and coping strategies, many of which are connected to…

There is a dearth of qualitative research concerning deaf people's experiences of participating in the Irish Sign Language (ISL) recognition movement, and this limits our ability to understand the opportunities and constraints they encountered as they negotiated their way toward the passing of the ISL Act 2017. While ISL is unique to Ireland, it…