This article puts forward a solution to the impending shortage of culturally and linguistically competent interpreters: the education of heritage signers as heritage language learners. It examines the current landscape of American Sign Language (ASL) as a course of study and the difficulties heritage signers report when they begin learning ASL. In…

A sociolinguistic survey of the sign language used by the deaf communities of Peru was conducted in November and December of 2007. For eight weeks, our survey team visited six deaf communities in the cities of Lima, Arequipa, Cusco, Trujillo, Chiclayo, and Iquitos. Using sociolinguistic questionnaires and recorded text testing (RTT) tools, we…

In this article we look at the use of ICST in two multilingual and deaf/hearing teams in an educational and research environment. We describe how job demands and job control (decision authority level) contribute to feelings of stress among the deaf and the hearing employees. We find that most information is received by all of the team members in…

Genetic counseling is part of the social response to the science of genetics. It is intended to help twenty-first-century societies manage the consequences of our ability to observe and intervene in our genetic makeup. This article explores the views, knowledge, and beliefs of some Deaf and hard of hearing people about genetics and genetic…

Technological and language innovation often flow in concert with one another. Casual observation by researchers has shown that electronic communication memes, in the form of abbreviations, have found their way into spoken English. This study focuses on the current use of electronic modes of communication, such as cell smartphones, and e-mail, and…

A survey indicated that out of 1,888 teachers of hearing-impaired students, 140 use American Sign Language (ASL) in their classrooms. Further investigation reduced this number to 25 who actually use ASL and 6 who probably do. (Author/CB)

Analysis of the responses of 42 hearing mothers of elementary school age, multihandicapped, deaf children to a questionnaire regarding their attitudes toward sign language found that positive attitudes were associated with high socioeconomic status, more realistic perceptions of the child's condition, a stronger sense of coherence, and families…

Examines private sign in preschoolers with hearing loss who are rated most and least advanced in literacy development. Teachers and parents/primary caregivers were surveyed to collect data on the use of private sign in these two groups. The majority of children with signing skills exhibited private sign in classroom and home contexts. (37…

Remarkably few studies have examined the outcomes of sign language interpreting. Three experiments reported here examine deaf students' comprehension of interpreting in American Sign Language and English-based signing (transliteration) as a function of their sign language skills and preferences. In Experiments 1 and 2, groups of deaf students…