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Analyzing Syntax and Semantics features the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) approach. This method uses student performance objectives, practice, feedback, individualization of pace, and repeatable testing as instructional strategies.
A Beginner's Guide
Beginning signers now can improve their recognition of the most commonly used signs with this easy-to-follow handbook based upon the revolutionary dictionary. The American Sign Language Handshape Starter illustrates 800 of the most frequently used signs, arranging them by the 40 standard handshapes used in American Sign Language (ASL). Carefully chosen for their common use, the signs also have been organized by day-to-day topics, including food, travel, family, sports, clothing, school terms, time, nature and animals, and many others from everyday conversation.
Exploring the Deaf Community in the United States
At Home Among Strangers is the first comprehensive sociological exploration of the Deaf community in the United States. This engrossing book captures the shared experience of the Deaf community in all of its dimensions through the precise observations of Jerome D. Schein. In nine thought-provoking chapters, he creates a fully realized image of the ramifications of being deaf and the growth of the Deaf community. From its vivid description of American Sign Language to the richly hued tapestry of Deaf culture, from Deaf people's organizational strengths to their exasperation in dealing with hearing medical, educational, and legal professions, this book presents a compelling study of a vibrant, active community. Most importantly, for the first time a theory of why the Deaf community exists is offered, using a wealth of detail to convey the dilemmas facing Deaf people and well-founded predictions for the future. At Home Among Strangers is an indsipensable book for scholars, teachers, and students alike, a standard in Deaf studies.
Challenges of Interpretation
The second volume in the Studies in Interpretation series delves further into the intricacies of sign language interpreting in five distinctive chapters. In the first chapter, Lawrence Forestal investigates the shifting attitudes of Deaf leaders toward sign language interpreters. Forestal notes how older leaders think of interpreters as their friends in exchanges, whereas Deaf individuals who attended mainstream schools possessed different feelings about interpreting. Frank J. Harrington observes in his chapter on British Sign Language-English interpreters in higher education that they cannot be viewed in isolation since all participants and the environment have a real impact on the way events unfold. In Chapter Three, Maree Madden explores the prevalence of chronic occupational physical injury among Australian Sign Language interpreters due to the stress created by constant demand and the lack of recognition of their professional rights. Susan M. Mather assesses and identifies regulators used by teachers and interpreters in mainstreaming classrooms. Her study supports other findings, including the success of ethnographic methods in providing insights into human interaction and intercultural communication within classroom settings. The fifth chapter views how interpreters convey innuendo, a complicated undertaking at best. Author Shaun Tray conducts a thorough examination of innuendo in American Sign Language, then points the way toward future research based upon ethnography, gender, and other key factors.
perception reality? Editor Melanie Metzger investigates the cultural perceptions by and of deaf people around the world in volume six of the Sociolinguistics series Bilingualism and Identity in Deaf Communities. “All sociocultural groups offer possible solutions to the dilemma that a deaf child presents to the larger group,” write Claire Ramsey and Jose Antonio Noriega in their essay, “Ninos Milagrizados: Language Attitudes, Deaf Education, and Miracle Cures in Mexico.” In this case, Ramsey and Noriega analyze cultural attempts to “unify” deaf children with the rest of the community. Other contributors report similar phenomena in deaf communities in New Zealand, Nicaragua, and Spain, paying particular attention to how society’s view of deaf people affects how deaf people view themselves. A second theme pervasive in this collection, akin to the questions of perception and identity, is the impact of bilingualism in deaf communities. Peter C. Hauser offers a study of an American child proficient in both ASL and Cued English while Annica Detthow analyzes “transliteration” between Spoken Swedish and Swedish Sign Language. Like its predecessors, this sixth volume of the Sociolinguistics series distinguishes itself by the depth and diversity of its research, making it a welcome addition to any scholar’s library.
Perspectives from Sub-Saharan Signed Language Communities
Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most linguistically, culturally, and geographically diverse regions of the world, home to more than 2,000 languages. As in the rest of the world, Deaf people live throughout the widely varying sub-Saharan communities, equally rich in their signed languages. An emergent body of scholarly research on sub-Saharan signed languages (SSSL) and related Deaf community organizing has created the opportunity to gather together the informed perspectives presented in this revolutionary collection. Drawing examples from all regions of sub-Saharan Africa—Western, Eastern, Central, and Southern—16 contributors join the volume editors in illuminating the circumstances pertaining to cross-border, cross-regional, and global engagements in sub-Saharan Deaf communities. This collection centers upon two interrelated purposes: to examine sub-Saharan African deaf people’s perspectives on citizenship, politics, and difference in relation to SSSL practices, and to analyze SSSL practices in relation to sociopolitical histories and social change interests (including addressing aspects of culture, gender, language usage, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and ability). The editors have organized these themes under three main sections, Sub-Saharan Signed Languages and Deaf Communities, The Politics of Mobilizing Difference, and Citizenship. Such wide-ranging subjects as the ethics of studying Kenyan signed language, sign language and Deaf communities in Eritrea, and overcoming cultural and linguistic barriers to HIV/AIDS education drive home the importance of the unique and varied research in this collection.
Multiple Perspectives on the Acquisition of Knowledge
Epistemology is the study of how “knowledge” is formed. Standard epistemology isolates the “known” from the “knowers,” thereby defining “knowledge” as objectively constant. Multiple epistemoligies suggest that individuals learn in different ways shaped by life factors such as education, family, ethnicity, history, and regional beliefs. In this groundbreaking volume, editors Peter V. Paul and Donald F. Moores call on ten other noted scholars and researchers to join them in examining the many ways that deaf people see and acquire deaf knowledge. This collection considers three major groups of deaf knowledge perspectives: sociological and anthropological, historical/psychological and literary, and educational and philosophical. The first explores the adoption of a naturalized, critical epistemological stance in evaluating research; the epistemology of a positive deaf identity; how personal epistemologies can help form deaf education policies; and valuing deaf indigenous knowledge in research. The next part considers dueling epistemologies in educating deaf learners; reforms in deaf education; the role of deaf children of hearing parents in creating Deaf epistemologies; and the benefit of reading literature with deaf characters for all studentds. The final part explores the application of the Qualitative-Similarity Hypothesis to deaf students’ acquisition of knowledge; a metaparadigm for literacy instruction in bilingual-bicultural education; collaborative knowledge-building to access academia; and and examination of the benefits and disadvantages of being deaf.
Local Lives, Transnational Connections
In his revolutionary new book, Jan-Kåre Breivik profiles ten Norwegian Deaf people and their life stories within a translocal/transnational framework. Breivik notes that, unlike hearing people, who form their identities from familial roots and local senses of place, deaf individuals often find themselves distanced from their own families and akin to other deaf people in far locations. His study records emerging deaf identities, which he observes are always in the making, and if settled, only temporarily so. To capture the identification processes involved, he relies upon a narrative perspective to trace identity as temporarily produced through autobiographical accounts or capsule life stories. As a result, he has produced striking, in-depth accounts of how core questions of identity are approached from different deaf points of view. The ten stories in Deaf Identities in the Making reveal deaf people who would like a stronger link to the Deaf world. Each story sheds different light on the overriding, empowering master narrative that has become an integral feature of the Deaf community. Like success stories from other minorities, the Deaf life story reinforces the collective empowerment process in a Deaf social milieu. Because of these revelations, Breivik’s findings easily reverberate globally in conjunction to the striking similarities of deaf lives around the world, particularly those connected with the experiences of being translocal signers who have struggled for identity in an overwhelmingly hearing context.
In his first memoir, Madan Vasishta described being a deaf boy in his homeland India, where “deaf” meant someone who is not human. After rising from herding cattle to being a respected photographer in Delhi, his first memoir concluded with his acceptance at Gallaudet College far away in America. Vasishta’s new memoir begins with his arrival in Washington, DC in 1967 with $40.00 in his pocket and very little knowledge of the new worlds he was entering. Vasishta faced myriad challenges from the outset—he knew no American Sign Language and could not speech read, yet he found himself thrust into classes at Gallaudet two weeks into the semester. Cultural differences mystified him, such as how all American car accidents were someone else’s fault even when one’s car hits a stationary object. He was amazed that his fellow students did not deride him for his mistakes, unlike in India where he would have been scorned for his weakness. After five years, he returned home to India for a visit and was stunned to learn that he no longer fit in, that “even if you do not have an American Dream, the American Dream will have you.” Deaf in DC follows Vasishta through half a century living in America. He witnessed the transformation from facing bias as a deaf, foreign man of color who could not get a job despite having a Ph.D., to receiving five offers as a school superintendent in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and Deaf President Now. His new memoir reflects a genuine worldview informed by the sage perceptions of a person who has lived widely in many worlds.
Now, for the first time, a collection featuring 17 widely respected scholars depicts the everyday practices of deaf interpreters in their respective nations. Deaf Interpreters at Work: International Insights presents the history of Deaf translators and interpreters and details the development of testing and accreditation to raise their professional profiles. Other chapters delineate the cognitive processes of Deaf interpreting; Deaf-Deaf interpreter teams; Deaf and hearing team preparation; the use of Tactile American Sign Language by those interpreting for the Deaf Blind community; and conference interpreting and interpreting teams. Along with volume coeditors Christopher Stone, Robert Adam, and Steven D. Collins, contributors include Markus Aro, Karen Bontempo, Juan Carlos Druetta, Senan Dunne, Eileen Forestal, Della Goswell, Juli af Klintberg, Patricia Levitzke-Gray, Jemina Napier, Brenda Nicodemus, Debra Russell, Stephanie Sforza, Marty Taylor, and Linda Warby. The scope of their research spans the world, including many unique facets of interpreting by deaf people in Argentina, Australia, Canada, England, Finland, Ireland, Sweden, and the United States, establishing this work as the standard in this burgeoning discipline.