This paper attends to languaging in the context of visually oriented communities of sign language users through the concept of "chaining." I define chaining as the patterned, routine ways of interlinking different linguistic and multimodal elements. The goal of this paper is to discuss the concepts of chaining, languaging and…

Late-deafness means deafness that happened postlingually, any time after the development of speech and language in a person who has identified with hearing society through schooling, social connections, etc. Students who are late-deafened cannot understand speech without visual aids such as speechreading, sign language, and captioning (although…

Examines American Sign Language (ASL) in the context of the orality/literacy debate and issues of language and cognition. Posits that ASL is a natural language independent of English, and asserts that examining other modes of language use can illuminate the nature of discourse in both oral and written forms. (MM)