This article discusses the function of a particular feature of sign language--mouth action--as it is expressed in various discourse contexts. Specifically, we examine forms of mouthing and mouth gesture as they are used in signed narrative and expository texts, highlighting the signers' choices during the production of these two text types. We…

Families with deaf parents and hearing children are often bilingual and bimodal, with both a spoken language and a signed one in regular use among family members. When interviewed, 13 American hearing adults with deaf parents reported widely varying language practices, sign language abilities, and social affiliations with Deaf and Hearing…

Signed languages exploit the visual/gestural modality to create iconic expression across a wide range of basic conceptual structures in which the phonetic resources of the language are built up into an analogue of a mental image (Taub, 2001). Previously, we demonstrated a processing advantage when iconic properties of signs were made salient in a…

A questionnaire survey assessing attitudes of 50 deaf adults toward sign language systems used in schools found the majority supported American Sign Language and Manually Coded English-Pidgin with some reservations. Respondents were also concerned about needs of individual deaf children and deaf adult involvement in educational decision making for…