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Winter 2008

COMMENTARY Breaking the Molds: Signed Languages and the Nature of Human Language Dan I. Slobin Abstract ARTICLES The Role of Iconicity in International Sign Rachel Rosenstock Abstract Reorganizing Teacher Preparation in Deaf Education Tom Humphries and Bobbie M. Allen Abstract �Bad Things�: Child Abuse and the Nineteenth-Century Spanish National School for the Deaf and Blind Susan Plann Abstract BOOK REVIEW Karen Nakamura, Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity Soya Mori ABSTRACTS Breaking the Molds: Signed Languages and the Nature of Human Language Grammars of signed languages tend to be based on grammars established for written languages, particularly the written language in use in the surrounding hearing community of a sign language. Such grammars presuppose categories of discrete elements which are combined into various sorts of structures. Recent analyses of signed languages go beyond this tradition, attending to gradient elements of signs and to the communicative and physical settings in which signs are produced. Important new insights are gained when sign language linguists consider such factors, making use of new tools of cognitive linguistics. A typological approach to signed languages suggests that they are of the opposite type to the surrounding spoken/written languages of Europe, North America, and East Asia. Those languages are dependent-marked, whereas signed languages are head-marked. Back to the Top The Role of Iconicity in International Sign This article investigates the role of iconicity in International Sign Language (ISL), as used by interpreters for Deaf people at international conferences. In analyses of ISL, specific issues of iconicity (e.g., degree of abstractness, levels of application, competing motivations, and universality) are considered and applied to ISL data. The data used in this article were recorded at Deaf Way II, an international conference held in Washington, D.C., and exemplify iconic structures on the lexical, syntactic, and discourse-pragmatic levels. Back to the Top Reorganizing Teacher Preparation in Deaf Education This article describes efforts at the University of California, San Diego in the Education Studies Program to develop and field-test a teacher preparation program that combines best practices in bilingual education and deaf education. The training curriculum designed for this program relies on research that finds a correlation between ASL fluency and English literacy. Also discussed is a collaborative project between training faculty and K�12 partners to transition between more traditional deaf education practices and new teaching and assessment practices focused on ASL literacy development as well as development in other languages. Back to the Top �Bad Things�: Child Abuse and the Nineteenth-Century Spanish National School for the Deaf and Blind This article draws on contemporary insights from the fields of psychology, sociology, and social welfare to analyze the potential threats of abuse posed by residential schools for deaf and blind children. It also examines an alleged episode of sexual abuse at the nineteenth century Spanish National School for deaf and blind children; the alleged perpetrator of these acts was director and professor Miguel Fern�ndez Villabrille. Back to the Top