Sociolinguistics Of Sign Languages
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Sociolinguistics Of Sign Languages
The sociolinguistics of sign languages is the application of sociolinguistic principles to the study of sign languages. The study of sociolinguistics in the American Deaf community did not start until the 1960s. Until recently, the study of sign language and sociolinguistics has existed in two separate domains. Nonetheless, now it is clear that many sociolinguistic aspects do not depend on modality and that the combined examination of sociolinguistics and sign language offers countless opportunities to test and understand sociolinguistic theories.Bayley, Robert, et al. "The Study of Language and Society." The Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics, Jan. 2013, p. 2. The sociolinguistics of sign languages focuses on the study of the relationship between social variables and linguistic variables and their effect on sign languages. The social variables external from language include age, region, social class, ethnicity, and sex. External factors are social by nature and may correlate with ...
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Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of language, which focuses on the effect of language on society. Sociolinguistics overlaps considerably with pragmatics and is closely related to linguistic anthropology. Sociolinguistics' historical interrelation with anthropology can be observed in studies of how language varieties differ between groups separated by social variables (e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc.) and/or geographical barriers (a mountain range, a desert, a river, etc.). Such studies also examine how such differences in usage and differences in beliefs about usage produce and reflect social or socioeconomic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place to place, language usage also varies among social classes, and it is t ...
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Code-switch
In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualism in that plurilingualism refers to the ability of an individual to use multiple languages, while code-switching is the act of using multiple languages together. Multilinguals (speakers of more than one language) sometimes use elements of multiple languages when conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the use of more than one linguistic variety in a manner consistent with the syntax and phonology of each variety. Code-switching may happen between sentences, sentence fragments, words, or individual morphemes (in synthetic languages). However, some linguists consider the borrowing of words or morphemes from another language to be different from other types of code-switching. There are many ways in which code-switching is employe ...
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Language Acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition involves structures, rules and representation. The capacity to use language successfully requires one to acquire a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary. Language can be vocalized as in speech, or manual as in sign. Human language capacity is represented in the brain. Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand an infinite number of sentences, which is based on a syntactic principle called recursion. Evidence suggests that every individual has three recursive mechanisms that allow sentences to go indeterminately. These three mechanisms are: ''relativization'', ''complementation'' and ''coordination''. There are two ma ...
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Lexicalization
In linguistics, lexicalization is the process of adding words, set phrases, or word patterns to a language's lexicon. Whether ''word formation'' and ''lexicalization'' refer to the same process is controversial within the field of linguistics. Most linguists agree that there is a distinction, but there are many ideas of what the distinction is. Lexicalization may be simple, for example borrowing a word from another language, or more involved, as in calque or loan translation, wherein a foreign phrase is translated literally, as in ''marché aux puces'', or in English, flea market. Other mechanisms include compounding, abbreviation, and blending. Particularly interesting from the perspective of historical linguistics is the process by which ''ad hoc'' phrases become set in the language, and eventually become new words (see lexicon). Lexicalization contrasts with grammaticalization, and the relationship between the two processes is subject to some debate. In psycholinguistic ...
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Fingerspelling
Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets (also known as finger alphabets or hand alphabets) have often been used in deaf education and have subsequently been adopted as a distinct part of a number of sign languages. There are about forty manual alphabets around the world. Historically, manual alphabets have had a number of additional applications—including use as ciphers, as mnemonics and in silent religious settings. Forms of manual alphabets As with other forms of manual communication, fingerspelling can be comprehended visually or tactually. The simplest visual form of fingerspelling is tracing the shape of letters in the air and the simplest tactual form is tracing them on the hand. Fingerspelling can be one-handed such as in American Sign Language, French Sign Language and Irish Sign Language, or it can be two-handed such as in British Sign Languag ...
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Jargon
Jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular Context (language use), communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The context is usually a particular occupation (that is, a certain trade, profession, vernacular or academic field), but any ingroups and outgroups, ingroup can have jargon. The main trait that distinguishes jargon from the rest of a language is special vocabulary—including some words specific to it and often different word sense, senses or meanings of words, that outgroups would tend to take in another sense—therefore misunderstanding that communication attempt. Jargon is sometimes understood as a form of technical slang and then distinguished from the official terminology used in a particular field of activity. The terms ''jargon'', ''slang,'' and ''argot'' are not consistently differentiated in the literature; different authors interpret the ...
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Home Sign
Home sign (or kitchen sign) is a gestural communication system, often invented spontaneously by a deaf child who lacks accessible linguistic input. Home sign systems often arise in families where a deaf child is raised by hearing parents and is isolated from the Deaf community. Because the deaf child does not receive signed or spoken language input, these children are referred to as linguistically isolated. Because home sign systems are used regularly as the child's form of communication, they develop to become more complex than simple gestures. Though not considered to be a complete language, these systems may be classified as linguistic phenomena that show similar characteristics to signed and spoken language. Home sign systems display significant degrees of internal complexity, using gestures with consistent meanings, word order, and grammatical categories. Linguists have been interested in home sign systems as insight into the human ability to generate, acquire, and process la ...
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Mainstreaming (education)
Mainstreaming, in the context of education, is the practice of placing students with special education needs in a general education classroom during specific time periods based on their skills. To clarify, this means students who are a part of the special education classroom will join the regular education classroom at certain times which are fitting for the special education student. These students may attend art or physical education in the regular education classrooms. Sometimes these students will attend math and science in a separate classroom, but attend English in a general education classroom. Schools that practice mainstreaming believe that students with special needs who cannot function in a general education classroom to a certain extent belong in the special education environment. Access to a special education classroom, often called a "separate classroom or resource room", is valuable to the student with a disability. Students have the ability to work one-to-one wit ...
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Sign Language Interpreters
A sign is an object, quality, event, or entity whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else. A natural sign bears a causal relation to its object—for instance, thunder is a sign of storm, or medical symptoms a sign of disease. A conventional sign signifies by agreement, as a full stop signifies the end of a sentence; similarly the words and expressions of a language, as well as bodily gestures, can be regarded as signs, expressing particular meanings. The physical objects most commonly referred to as signs (notices, road signs, etc., collectively known as signage) generally inform or instruct using written text, symbols, pictures or a combination of these. The philosophical study of signs and symbols is called semiotics; this includes the study of semiosis, which is the way in which signs (in the semiotic sense) operate. Nature Semiotics, epistemology, logic, and philosophy of language are concerned about the nature of sign ...
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Videophone
Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Encyclopedia of EngineeringVideotelephony McGraw-Hill, 2002. Retrieved from the FreeDictionary.com website, January 9, 2010 A videophone is a telephone with a video camera and video display, capable of simultaneous video and audio communication. Videoconferencing implies the use of this technology for a group or organizational meeting rather than for individuals, in a videoconference.Mulbach et al, 1995. pg. 291. Telepresence may refer either to a high-quality videotelephony system (where the goal is to create the illusion that remote participants are in the same room) or to meetup technology, which can go beyond video into robotics (such as moving around the room or physically manipulating objects). Videoconferencing has also been called "visu ...
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Martha's Vineyard Sign Language
Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) was a village sign-language that was once widely used on the island of Martha's Vineyard from the early 18th century to 1952. It was used by both Deaf and hearing people in the community; consequently, deafness did not become a barrier to participation in public life. Deaf people who signed Martha's Vineyard Sign Language were extremely independent. They participated in society as typical citizens, although there were incidents of discrimination, and language barriers. The language was able to thrive because of the unusually high percentage of Deaf islanders and because deafness was a recessive trait, which meant that almost anyone might have both Deaf and hearing siblings. In 1854, when the island's Deaf population peaked, an average of one person in 155 was Deaf, while the United States national average was one in about 5,730. In the town of Chilmark, which had the highest concentration of Deaf people on the island, the average was 1 i ...
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Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard, often simply called the Vineyard, is an island in the Northeastern United States, located south of Cape Cod in Dukes County, Massachusetts, known for being a popular, affluent summer colony. Martha's Vineyard includes the smaller adjacent Chappaquiddick Island, which is usually connected to the Vineyard. The two islands have sometimes been separated by storms and hurricanes, which last occurred from 2007 to 2015. It is the 58th largest island in the U.S., with a land area of about , and the third-largest on the East Coast, after Long Island and Mount Desert Island. Martha's Vineyard constitutes the bulk of Dukes County, which also includes the Elizabeth Islands and the island of Nomans Land (Massachusetts), Nomans Land. The Vineyard was home to one of the earliest known deaf communities in the United States; consequently, a sign language, the Martha's Vineyard Sign Language, emerged on the island among both deaf and hearing islanders. The 2010 census report ...
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