The degree of mutual intelligibility of British Sign Language (BSL) regional varieties has been a subject of some debate. Recent research in which dyads of signers from contrasting regional backgrounds engaged in a conversational task showed no problems understanding one another. The present study investigated signers' knowledge of different BSL…

Sign language interpreters work with a variety of consumer populations throughout their careers. One such population, referred to as "emergent signers," consists of consumers who are in the process of learning American Sign Language, and who rely on interpreters during their language acquisition period. A gap in the research is revealed…

Developmental psychology plays a central role in shaping evidence-based best practices for prelingually deaf children. The Auditory Scaffolding Hypothesis (Conway et al., 2009) asserts that a lack of auditory stimulation in deaf children leads to impoverished implicit sequence learning abilities, measured via an artificial grammar learning (AGL)…

In 1924 Jabbar Baghcheban created a manual system that employed the phonetic characteristics of spoken Persian and Perso-Arabic orthography for use in the education of deaf students (Ibrahimi 2007). This article is a first exploration of variation and change in this system as it has evolved into the Iranian manual alphabet. Data on the…

This study investigated whether language control during language production in bilinguals generalizes across modalities, and to what extent the language control system is shaped by competition for the same articulators. Using a cued language-switching paradigm, we investigated whether switch costs are observed when hearing signers switch between a…

Often compared to Laurent Clerc, Thomas Gallaudet, and Alexander Graham Bell, Dr. Andrew Foster was a deaf African American who founded 32 schools for the deaf in 13 African nations. The 60th anniversary of his arrival in Liberia and Ghana and the 30th anniversary of his tragic death in a Rwanda airplane accident both occur in 2017. Renewed…

This paper reports on an international collaborative project working with deaf learners of English literacy (19-28 years old) in five locations in India: Indore; Vadadora; Comibatore; Pattambi; and Thrissur. Indian Sign Language (ISL) was the language of instruction. The project drew on a social practices view of literacy. Deaf peer tutors were…

In my dissertation, I examine four notation systems used to represent hand configurations in child acquisition of signed languages. Linguists have long recognized the descriptive limitations of Stokoe notation, currently the most commonly used system for phonetic or phonological transcription, but continue using it because of its widespread…

This paper tells the story of the struggle to introduce a Japanese sign language program in a school for the deaf in Japan that until recently had followed the government's approach that emphasizes oral communication. Our method and conceptual framework is ethnographic, as we emphasize the cultural beliefs that underlie the three competing…

The Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS), developed by Lewis and Simons and based on work by Fishman, provides a means of rating "language vitality"--the level of development or endangerment--where "development" is understood as adding or preserving functions and "endangerment" as loss of…

The purpose of the study is to provide a literature review of the work done on sign language (SL) around the world and in Pakistan and to develop a translation tool of speech and text to Pakistan Sign Language (PSL) with bilingual subtitles. Information and communication technology and tools development for teaching and learning purposes improve…

The study examined views of stakeholders on the use of Sign Language as a medium of instruction in the learning of hearing impaired in primary schools of Lusaka, Zambia. A case study design supported by qualitative methods was used. The sample size was 57, consisting of teachers, pupils, curriculum specialist, education standards officers,…

Deaf and hard of hearing (D/hh) students face academic challenges in the post-secondary setting due to low literacy skills and academic barriers. However, despite these challenges, little attention has been focused on mainstream faculty who teach D/hh students. This study investigated perceptions of mainstream faculty at the post-secondary level…

This study was aimed at assessing educational practices and challenges of students with hearing impairments in Arba Minch College of Teachers' Education in SNNPR, Ethiopia. In order to obtain a comprehensive understanding academic practices and challenges and ways of improving that impede students with hearing impairments in integration setting.…

Short-term linguistic accommodation has been observed in a number of spoken language studies. The first of its kind in sign language research, this study aims to investigate the effects of regional varieties in contact and lexical accommodation in British Sign Language (BSL). Twenty-five participants were recruited from Belfast, Glasgow,…