Sign Language Studies 

About: Sign Language Studies is an academic journal published by Gallaudet University Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Sign language & American Sign Language. It has an ISSN identifier of 0302-1475. Over the lifetime, 949 publications have been published receiving 16411 citations. The journal is also known as: SLS.

Chasing the Mythical Ten Percent: Parental Hearing Status of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in the United States

Abstract: DEAF CHILDREN born to deaf parents are likely to grow up in a social, cultural, and linguistic milieu different from that in which children of hearing parents grow up (e.g., Erting 1994; Morford and Mayberry 2000; Padden and Humphries 1988; Schein 1989; Wilcox 1988). In the United States, deaf children of deaf parents may well have American Sign Language, rather than spoken English (or Spanish, French, Vietnamese, etc.), as their first language of fluency (also see Stuckless and Birch 1966; Harris 1978). Whereas severe or profound deafness is not a very common occurrence in the child population, intergenerational deafness is even rarer (e.g., Blanchfield et al. 1999; Niskar et al. 1998; Ries 1994; Schein and Delk 1974). In this article we address the question of the prevalence of "deaf-of-deaf" children within the overall group of deaf and hard of hearing children and youth.1 Our analysis questions the often-repeated statement that ten percent of deaf children are born to deaf parents (Schein 1989). The prevalence of deaf children of deaf parents has been discussed since the nineteenth century (see review by Moores 2001, pp. 89-100). As far back as the early 1800s, various American schools or agencies have undertaken the systematic collection of information about the hearing status of the parents of deaf students (see review by Best 1943, pp. 34-72). Not until the very end of the nineteenth century, however, was any effort made to provide an estimate of national prevalence (Fay 1898). Fay's work influenced the U.S. Census Bureau to include special supplements to collect data on the deafness of family members in 1910 and 1920. Unfortunately, these two early-twentieth-century national estimates were the only ones available until the Annual Survey of Hearing Impaired Children and Youth was initiated in 1968 (hereafter, the Annual Survey; see, for example, Rawlings 1971, 1973; Jordan and Karchmer 1986), followed by the National Census of the Deaf Population (NCDP) in 1972 (Schein and Delk 1974).2 Soon thereafter, in 1974, a study was conducted by the Office of Demographic Studies (ODS) at Gallaudet College using a subsample from the "National Achievement Test Standardization Program for Hearing Impaired Children" (see Jensema and Trybus 1978; Karchmer, Trybus, and Paquin 1978; Rawlings and Jensema 1977), which largely depended on the 1972-1973 Annual Survey for its sampling frame.3 The ODS distributed a special survey to a nationwide random sample of 1,362 students, to which nearly eight hundred families with deaf or hard of hearing children responded (some with more than one such child), that included a request for parental hearing status information. These national demographic studies have reported estimates of the proportion of deaf and hard of hearing children with one or more nonhearing parents ranging from three percent (2.2 percent in 1910 and 3.3 percent in 1920; Best 1943) to approaching nine percent (Rawlings and Jensema 1977). The variability in these estimates is due to differences in the groups being studied, to methodological differences, and, importantly, to differences in terminology. For example, in reporting its findings, the Annual Survey did not routinely distinguish between being deaf and hard of hearing until 1993, referring to both as "hearing impaired." For more than three decades now, there have been noteworthy efforts to identify the national prevalence of deaf children of deaf parents. However, as mentioned earlier, we more often learn how many "hearing impaired" children of "hearing impaired" parents there are. Using two consecutive Annual Surveys of the number of such students whose parents had "hearing loss before age 6," Rawlings (1971, 1973) presents detailed tabulations by parental gender. The value of knowing parental gender in either year, important but unmentioned, is to indicate that it was far more common to have unavailable data for the father than for the mother. Otherwise, gender identification did not reveal remarkable patterns. …

American Sign Language: The Phonological Base

Abstract: This paper has the ambitious goal of outlining the phonological structures and proc- esses we have analyzed in American Sign Language (ASL). In order to do this we have divided the paper into five parts. In section 1 we detail the types of sequential phenomena found in the production of individual signs, allowing us to argue that ASL signs are composed of sequences of phonological segments, just as are words in spoken languages. Section 2 provides the details of a segmental phonetic tran- scription system. Using the descriptions made available by the transcription system, Section 3 briefly discusses both paradigmatic and syntagmatic contrast in ASL signs. Section 4 deals with the various types of phonological processes at work in the language, processes remarkable in their similarity to phonological processes found in spoken languages. We conclude the paper with an overview of the major typed of phonological effects of ASL's rich system of morphological processes. We realize that the majority of readers will come to this paper with neither sign language proficiency nor a knowledge of sign language structure. As a result, many will encounter reference to ASL signs without knowing their form. Although we have been unable to illustrate all the examples, we hope we have provided sufficient illustra- tions to make the paper more accessible.

How Many People Use ASL in the United States?: Why Estimates Need Updating.

Abstract: IN THE UNITED STATES, home language use surveys are now commonplace. The decennial census has included inquiries about home language use within immigrant households since 1890 and within all U.S. homes since 1970 (see U.S. Census Bureau 20023, hereafter cited as Measuring America). Public schools, originally to comply with the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, authorized in Title VII, Part A, of the Elementary and secondary Education Act, routinely collect home language use data for each student enrolled. The number of languages used in homes in the United States, as identified by the various federal and state surveys, is quite large. However, American Sign Language (ASL) is not on the list of non-English languages used in the home, and no state in the union counts its users in either the general or the school population. Conspicuous by its absence in U.S. language census data is an estimate of how many people use American Sign Language in the United States. We have found that California records sign language use in the home when children enter school (e.g., California Department of Education 2004); the Annual Survey of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Youth (hereafter cited as Annual Survey) collects data on sign language use by family members with their deaf or hard of hearing children (e.g., see Mitchell and Karchmer 2005). However, there is no systematic and routine collection of data on sign language or ASL use in the general population. Given that estimates of the number of people who use ASL are relatively easy to find in research and practitioner publications, as well as scattered across the Internet, and range from 100,000 to 15,000,000, we decided to track down their sources. In this review of the literature on the prevalence of ASL use in the United States, we identify a number of misunderstandings. To make sense of them, we focus on two documents in particular: first, a statement presented during the U.S. Senate hearings for the Bilingual Courts Act of 1974 about how sign language use ranks in comparison to other non-English languages in the United States (Beale 1974) and, second, the findings from the National Census of the Deaf Population (NCDP; see Schein and DeIkJr. 1974). This in-depth review clarifies the meaning of the original statement for the Bilingual Courts Act of 1974 hearings and provides a more justifiable estimate of the number of signers. This number does not necessarily include all ASL users, based upon the NCDP, which is the only research study from which data-based estimates may be derived. Before we consider these earlier works, however, we offer some background on the problems of obtaining accurate (let alone current) estimates of how many people use ASL in the United States from large-scale, ongoing national data collection efforts. These include the decennial census of the U.S. population and its companion projects, the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the American Comsmunity Survey (ACS), as well as surveys commissioned by other federal agencies, in particular, the National Health Survey (NHS) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Demography of Language and Deafness We focus on two demographic research categories: (1) ASL as a language of national origin and (2) deafness. For more than a century, the federal government has mandated national census counts, or censusbased survey estimates, of non-English language use in the U.S. population. Also, originally as an activity of the U.S. Bureau of the Census and then, after a delay of several decades, a U.S. Public Health Service responsibility, there have been regular estimates of the prevalence of deafness and other disabilities in the country. In this section we review some of the specifics of these two demographic categories-language and deafness-and suggest that these distinct projects require a unified perspective before ASL use is likely to be included as part of the demographic description of the U. …

Phonological Deletion in American Sign Language

Abstract: The American Sign Language of the deaf (ASL) has a level of structure which is analogous to phonology. The natural basis for both lexical description and analysis of variation is the articulatory dynamics of the hands and body.