This paper explores the linguistic landscape (LL) of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and shows how this religious site contains within it different domains, each with their own LL and preferred mediums of display. We illustrate this by exploring the LL of five domains within the mosque: Holiness, Education, Workplace, Local Governance and the Public…

The high degree of comprehensibility between the signed languages in Trieste (present-day Italy) and Austria is very probably due to their joint history of deaf schools within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Investigation undertaken in archives in Trieste and Klagenfurt has revealed interesting similarities in the education of deaf children there…

By providing evidence that sign language is an autonomous language, research has contributed to various changes both within and beyond the signing communities. The aim of this article is to present an example of how sign language change is driven not only by language-internal factors but also by changes in language perception, as well as in the…

Pamela Wright Moers has worked with American Sign Language (ASL) and English language instruction for over 25 years, and both her work and her studies have focused on the various uses of language. Her research has been on language endangerment, diversity in sign language, third-world sign languages, and the phonological and semantic structures…

Brenda Perrodin is a teacher in the Parent-Infant Program at the Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center's Kendall Demonstration Elementary School (KDES), on the campus of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. With a bachelor's degree in early childhood education and a master's degree in family-centered early education from Gallaudet…

The development of sign language recognition legislation is a relatively recent phenomenon in the field of language policy. So far only few authors have documented signing communities' aspirations for recognition legislation, how they work with their governments to achieve legislation which most reflects these goals, and whether and why outcomes…

This paper presents a critical examination of key concepts in the study of (signed and spoken) language and multimodality. It shows how shifts in conceptual understandings of language use, moving from bilingualism to multilingualism and (trans)languaging, have resulted in the revitalisation of the concept of language repertoires. We discuss key…

In this study, we investigated how activation unfolds in sign production by examining whether signs that are not produced have their representations activated by semantics (cascading of activation). Deaf signers were tested with a picture-picture interference task. Participants were presented with pairs of overlapping pictures and named the green…

Purpose: The main purpose is to investigate what resources young emergent bilinguals use to communicate a multimodal response to children's literature. In particular, attention is paid to the ways students translanguage as part of the learning process. Design/methodology/approach: An ethnography-in-education approach was used to capture the social…

Colonial and decolonial tensions manifested in a unique, Mexican school for the deaf that used Mexican Sign Language for instruction. (De)colonial tensions were inherent in the school's work, from its non-Mexican, Foreign-origin school board to its child-of-deaf-adults principal's vision. We observed the presence of a colonial legacy, decolonial…

The Linguistic Landscape (LL) is a relatively new field which draws from several disciplines such as applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and cultural geography. According to Landry and Bourhis (1997),"the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop…

In the study reported on here we investigated the effects of sign language barriers among Deaf learners in special schools for the Deaf and Blind in the Motheo District in the Free State province of South Africa. Semi-structured focus group interviews were held with 7 teachers (2 males and 5 females) and 10 Grade 8 learners (6 males and 4 females)…

The choice to create or renovate museum buildings to green building standards is a growing trend for science museums. With access to green facilities comes the potential to extend informal science learning into the three-dimensional architectural environment. To examine how and if museums with green buildings interpret their buildings for the…

Learning and Reading Assistant (LARA) is an open source platform that enables conversion of plain texts into an interactive multimedia form designed to support second- and foreign-language (L2) learners. In this workshop, we illustrate the open source aspects using collaborative work carried out during a six-week summer project at the Árni…

The focus of this article is the experiences of Deaf Philadelphians vis-à-vis language policy and practice at PSD. We delineate the official and unofficial communication philosophies and pedagogies from the school's inception to present day, providing a framework for understanding the trajectory of linguistic freedom and restriction of its…