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View Our Catalog | Turn-Taking, Fingerspelling, and Contact in
Signed Languages
The Eighth Volume in the Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities Series From Studies in Second Language Acquisition, a publication of Cambridge University Press The Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities series published by Gallaudet University Press is, first and foremost, the leading collection of published work dealing explicitly with sociolinguistic issues in Deaf communities around the world. It is also more than this, however. Arguably, the series constitutes the foundation of one of the most exciting and promising areas of contemporary sociolinguistic research writ large. There can be little question that much of the very best work in sociolinguistics in the United States today is being done on issues related to sign language and the Deaf, and this series has provided us with a remarkable number of significant contributions to the general sociolinguistic literature. This volume edited by Ceil Lucas is the most recent publication in this series, and it carries on the impressive tradition of the earlier works in the series. The chapters address a wide range of topics that should be of interest not only to sign language researchers but also to anyone interested in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, language policy, and educational linguistics. The chapters include a fascinating study of variation in American Sign Language (ASL) fingerspelling, a most interesting discussion about the role and nature of ASL-English interpreting entitled “So, Why Do I Call This English?”, two chapters that address issues of discourse and turn-taking mechanisms in the Belgian context, and finally, a very intriguing chapter on the Deaf in the majority bilingual speaking community of Barcelona. The issues raised are, in spite of the book’s title, areas of concern for the study of language broadly conceived: language variation, language identification, language contact, discourse processes and characteristics, and language attitudes. This is a timely and significant work, and one that deserves a substantial reading audience.
-- Timothy Reagan, University of Connecticut Ceil Lucas is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Interpretation at Gallaudet University. ISBN 1-56368-128-5, 6 x 9 casebound, 176 pages, figures, tables, references, index $69.95s
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