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…

In 1981, Sweden was the first country in the world to entitle deaf pupils to a bimodal-bilingual education. However, drawing from interviews with key past Stockholm teacher trainers and on our own efforts to update teacher training, we note that sign-bilingual teacher training in Sweden has been ad hoc to this day. The interviewees' accounts…

Is the right to sign language only the right to a minority language? Holding a capability (not a disability) approach, and building on the psycholinguistic literature on sign language acquisition, I make the point that this right is of a stronger nature, since only sign languages can guarantee that each deaf child will properly develop the…

New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) became an official language (NZSL Act 2006) when its vitality was already under pressure. Even though its institutional status has improved recently, the traditional community domains of NZSL use and transmission are apparently shrinking inasmuch as most of the deaf children who have cochlear implants are acquiring…

The past three decades of activism for linguistic human rights (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000) have witnessed examples of language planning by various national and supranational actors in national and international spaces, with an exchange of ideas and strategies employed by national, regional, and worldwide organizations. In many countries a key goal of…

Following a well-established tradition going back to the 1980s (cf. Volterra 1987/2004), the authors use the name Lingua dei Segni Italiana (Italian Sign Language [LIS]) for the language used by Italian deaf people (and by Swiss deaf people living in the Ticino canton). LIS is becoming more and more visible, and its status as a minority language…

This article centers on the implications of genetic developments (as a scientific and technological discipline) for those Deaf people who identify as a cultural and linguistic minority group and are concerned with the preservation and development of sign language and Deaf culture. We explore the impact of one particular legislative initiative that…