Shared sign languages
Temas
Detalles
In communities with an unusually high incidence of deafness, sign languages shared byboth hearing and deaf community members are found to spontaneously develop. The sociolinguistic setting of these shared sign languages, also known as “village sign lan- guages”, differs considerably from the settings of the “macro-community sign languages” studied so far. This chapter provides an overview of communities with a high incidenceof deafness around the globe, followed by an overview of the sociological and sociolin- guistic features that characterize them. A description is then given of the structural fea-tures in which shared sign languages appear to differ from the sign languages of largeDeaf communities. A discussion of the role of language age and language ecology in shaping shared sign languages concludes this chapter.
En: Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language. An international handbook (HSK – Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science), pp. 552-574.