This article explores the language of bimodal bilinguals (i.e., hearing children of Deaf parents who are exposed to sign language at home and to spoken language in the surrounding community). In similar bilingual contexts involving pairs of spoken languages, the language used at home, which differs from that of the community, is referred to as the…

Examines the characteristics of diglossia and applies them to the current sign language situation in the United States. Concludes diglossia does not exist and argues that what is really happening is code switching between languages and style shifting within a language. (EKN)