Multicultural Aspects of Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities

Book excerpt: Eight studies demonstrate the diverse patterns by which deaf people around the world interact with their hearing societies, and document changing attitudes among the deaf about their role in society. The topics include a village in Indonesia with so many deaf people that hearing people are fluent in both sign and spoken languages; variation in signing among gays, lesbians, and bisexuals; bilingual deaf education in Venezuela; visually constructed dialogue with young students; the interrogative in Italian Sign Language; and American Sign Language as a truly foreign language no more difficult to learn than any other. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR