Discusses the linguistic situation of the deaf and the shift in linguistic ideology from graphocentrism to orocentrism, which forms the scenario in which deaf people are struggling to legitimize their natural form of expression. Questions both graphocentrism and orocentrism and proposes neutral terms and a neutral perspective from which orality…

Discusses sign language use in South Africa and the deaf as an oppressed community. The following issues are addressed: language planning and sign language, the role of sign language as the vernacular of an oppressed linguistic community, and the implications of sign language for other cultural and social issues that divide South African society.…

The study compared scores on a literacy battery of hearing-impaired subjects exposed to either an instructional communication system that attempts to completely encode a language (e.g. oral English, Signing Exact English) or to signed systems that incompletely encode spoken English. Students using the completely encoded language tended to perform…

Briefly describes five dictionaries of the signed languages used in Australia, Mexico, Italy, New Zealand, and Thailand. (CB)

Investigation of profoundly deaf adolescent students' ability to read signs in peripheral vision revealed a mean success rate of about 80 percent. Results support the supposition that peripheral vision may be linguistically and communicatively useful for deaf people, particularly as signs in isolation are more difficult to read than signs in…

Four writers (Yerker Andersson, Trevor Johnston, Leila Monaghan, and Brian Street) respond to Graham Turner's discussion of deaf culture, considering labeling categories and approaches to definitions of "deaf culture." (Contains 24 references.) (LB)

Turner's responses to discussion of deaf culture cover these topics: deaf perspective; approaches to description; transparency and explicitness; labeling; historical awareness; and "thinking beyond." (Contains seven references.) (LB)

This article encourages hearing individuals in the elementary school community to learn sign language. Suggestions include having students teach students, having family sign classes, incorporating sign instruction throughout the day, giving everyone a name sign, and having schoolwide events in which signing is featured. (DB)

Critiques the previous article by Torigoe and others (1995) and discusses research on indigenous gestural systems developed by people with deafness and shared with local hearing communities. Poses questions for further research in the field of indigenous gestural communication. (Seven references) (MDM)

Proposes the use of semantic phonology, a simple method of sign phonology. Semantic phonology invites one to look at a sign--a word of a primary sign language--as a marriage of noun and verb. (GLR)

A mother of a hearing-impaired two year old offers examples of utilizing siblings (who have learned sign language) to foster the language development and socialization of the younger child. (DB)

Demographic study of the number of deaf users of Australian Sign Language (Auslan) identified over 15,000 deaf who used Auslan daily in interactions with deaf and hearing persons, and evidence of strong social and linguistic cohesion in the deaf community, but high levels of unemployment and underemployment. (16 references) (Author/CB)

Examines two sex-based variations in the Irish Sign Language of Dublin, Ireland, commonly referred to as "female" and "male" signs. The differences between women's knowledge of "male" signs and men's knowledge of female signs are a result of differences in cultural opportunities to acquire full facility with both…

Investigates whether the reasons for deaf children's poor achievement lie in their strategy development. Reports that structural aspects of sign language counting may influence deaf children's thinking in a way that does not lead to a developed conceptual knowledge base, but rather to refined procedural competence. (Contains 31 references.)…

This study investigated speaking rate and voice onset time (VOT) in speech produced during simultaneous communication (SC) by speakers with normal hearing. The somewhat enlarged voicing contrast during SC was consistent with previous findings regarding the influence of rate changes on the temporal fine structure of speech and voicing contrast…