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empowerment, deaf communities, sign language linguistics, research ethics
Abstract:
First paragraph. Since its advent half a century ago, the field of sign language linguistics has
had close ties to education and the empowerment of deaf communities, a
union that is fittingly celebrated by Deaf around the world: The impact of
language. With this fruitful relationship in mind, sign language researchers
and deaf educators gathered in Philadelphia in 2008, and in the volume
under review, Gaurav Mathur & Donna Jo Napoli (henceforth M&N)
present a selection of papers from this conference, organised in two parts:
‘Sign languages: Creation, context, form’, and ‘Social issues/civil rights ’.
Each of the chapters is accompanied by a response chapter on the same or a
related topic. The first part of the volume focuses on the linguistics of sign
languages and includes papers on the impact of language modality on morphosyntax,
second language acquisition, and grammaticalisation, highlighting
the fine balance that sign linguists need to strike when conducting
methodologically sound research. The second part of the book includes
accounts by deaf activists from countries including China, India, Japan,
Kenya, South Africa and Sweden who are considered prominent figures in
areas such as deaf education, politics, culture and international development.
