Elements in Sign Languages – serie

Taboo topics in deaf communities include the usual ones found in spoken languages, as well as ones particular to deaf experiences, both in how deaf people relate to hearing people and how deaf people interact with other deaf people. Attention to these topics can help linguists understand better the consequences of field method choices and lead them to adopt better ones. Taboo expressions in American Sign Language are innovative regarding the linguistic structures they play with. This creativity is evident across the grammar in non-taboo expressions, but seems to revel in profane ones. When it comes to the syntax, however, certain types of structures occur in taboo expressions that are all but absent elsewhere, showing grammatical possibilities that might have gone unnoticed without attention to taboo. Taboo expressions are innovative, as well, in how they respond to changing culture, where lexical items that are incoherent with community sensibilities are 'corrected'.

This Element describes creative sign language in deaf literature. To showcase the exciting developments in Latin American deaf literature, the authors focus upon creative Libras as it is used by the Brazilian deaf community, while emphasising aspects of Libras literature that can be seen in similar productions and performances in sign language literatures around the world. Throughout the Element, the authors refer to examples of Libras poems and stories to give readers a practical experience of appreciating works of creative sign language. They describe Libras literature within its historical and social contexts and consider questions of performance, filming and editing and the potential for written Libras literature. Drawing on anthologies of Libras poems, jokes and stories, they use close-reading techniques to show how the literary effects are created, while reminding the reader that sign language literature cannot be separated from the deaf community.

Deaf children experience language deprivation at alarmingly high rates. One contributing factor is that most are born to non-signing hearing parents who face insurmountable barriers to learning a signed language. This Element presents a case for developing signed language curricula for hearing families with deaf children that are family-centered and focus on child-directed language. Core vocabulary, functional sentences, and facilitative language techniques centered around common daily routines allow families to apply what they learn immediately. Additionally, Deaf Community Cultural Wealth (DCCW) lessons build families' capacity to navigate the new terrain of raising a deaf child. If early intervention programs serving the families of young deaf children incorporate this type of curriculum into their service delivery, survey data suggest that it is both effective and approachable for this target population, so the rates of language deprivation may decline.

Language documentation of the American Sign Language (ASL) communities is essential to preserve and share our language use and interaction, something we cherish. Yet there is no conventionalized written system that can be used, instead we've been using video. Currently these videos are mostly not accessible in a way we can search the contents for language expressions. The ASL Signbank, an empirical-based resource-driven database, labels ASL use in transcripts time-aligned to ASL videos along with a set of annotation conventions to make the data machine-readable. ASL Signbank is a cloud-based annotation tool built over twenty years from the models of extant signbanks and their organizing principles. To create a database requires many choices and ongoing labor which is detailed in this Element - from what ASL Signbank is to why it exists and how to use it. This Element is also a reflection on these choices.