For the fourth most used language in the United States, there has not previously been a manual that did more than simply show how to make individual signs. Signing Made Easy teaches how to use signing as a language.

Video relay service (VRS) is a federally funded service that provides telecommunications access for deaf people. It is also a for-profit industry with guidelines that may limit the autonomy of the sign language interpreters who work in VRS settings. In this volume, Erica Alley examines how VRS interpreters, or "Communication Assistants," exercise professional autonomy despite the constraints that arise from rules and regulations established by federal agencies and corporate entities. Through interviews with VRS interpreters, Alley reveals the balance they must achieve in providing effective customer service while meeting the quantitative measures of success imposed by their employer in a highly structured call center environment. Alley considers the question of how VRS fits into the professional field of interpreting, and discovers that--regardless of the profit-focused mentality of VRS providers--interpreters make decisions with the goal of creating quality customer service experiences for deaf consumers, even if it means "breaking the rules." Her findings shed light on the decision-making process of interpreters and how their actions are governed by principles of self-care, care for colleagues, and concern for the quality of services provided. Professional Autonomy in Video Relay Service Interpreting is essential reading in interpreter education courses and interpreter training programs.

This volume has arisen from a three-part, five-year study on language contact among multilingual sign language users, which has three strands: cross-signing, sign-switching, and sign-speaking. These phenomena are only sparsely documented so far, and thus the volume is highly innovative and presents data and analyses not previously available.

This pioneering volume lays out a set of methodological principles to guide the description of interpersonal grammar in different languages. It compares interpersonal systems and structures across a range of world languages, showing how discourse, interpersonal relationships between the speakers, and the purpose of their communication, all play a role in shaping the grammatical structures used in interaction. Following an introduction setting out these principles, each chapter focuses on a particular language - Khorchin Mongolian, Mandarin, Tagalog, Pitjantjatjara, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, British Sign Language and Scottish Gaelic - and explores mood, polarity, tagging, vocation, assessment and comment systems. The book provides a model for functional grammatical description that can be used to inform work on system and structure across languages as a foundation for functional language typology.

A classical viewpoint claims that reality consists of both things and stuff, and that we need a way to discuss these aspects of reality. This is achieved by using +count terms to talk about things while using +mass terms to talk about stuff. Bringing together contributions from internationally-renowned experts across interrelated disciplines, this book explores the relationship between mass and count nouns in a number of syntactic environments, and across a range of languages. It both explains how languages differ in their methods for describing these two fundamental categories of reality, and shows the many ways that modern linguistics looks to describe them. It also explores how the notions of count and mass apply to 'abstract nouns', adding a new dimension to the countability discussion. With its pioneering approach to the fundamental questions surrounding mass-count distinction, this book will be essential reading for researchers in formal semantics and linguistic typology.

Featuring more than 1,000 ASL sign drawings arranged alphabetically by English terms, plus delightful color illustrations and practice sentences for each sign, the Gallaudet Children's Dictionary stands alone as the best, most entertaining ASL reference volume for deaf and hearing children alike. This bilingual dictionary serves a two-fold purpose - to increase and improve deaf children's English vocabulary skills and to teach American Sign Language to hearing children.

Let's say there are three Scotlands. The Scotland of cityscapes, stunning and grim. The Scotland of open spaces, stunning and grand. The Scotland of the mind: inventors of television and telephone, proponents of the existence of underwater monsters, a world of jigs and reels and long traditions, a nation which was independent in heart and mind and stance long before it had its own new parliament. This book is a guide to the distinct Scots language, urban, rural and cultural. It is aimed both at native speakers of English and those who have learned English as a second language and at native Scots. It explains and exemplifies Scots vocabulary and usage and, on occasions, makes comparisons with English usage, particularly where the differences are likely to cause confusion.

Is the British press prejudiced against Muslims? In what ways can prejudice be explicit or subtle? This book uses a detailed analysis of over 140 million words of newspaper articles on Muslims and Islam, combining corpus linguistics and discourse analysis methods to produce an objective picture of media attitudes. The authors analyse representations around frequently cited topics such as Muslim women who wear the veil and 'hate preachers'. The analysis is self-reflexive and multidisciplinary, incorporating research on journalistic practices, readership patterns and attitude surveys to answer questions which include: what do journalists mean when they use phrases like 'devout Muslim' and how did the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks affect press reporting? This is a stimulating and unique book for those working in fields of discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, while clear explanations of linguistic terminology make it valuable to those in the fields of politics, media studies, journalism and Islamic studies.

The last three decades have witnessed a growth of interest in research on tasks from various perspectives and numerous books and collections of articles have been published focusing on the notion of task and its utility in different contexts. Nevertheless, what is lacking is a multi-faceted examination of tasks from different important perspectives. This edited volume, with four sections of three chapters each, views tasks and Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) from four distinct (but complementary) vantage points. In the first section, all chapters view tasks from a cognitive-interactionist angle with each addressing one key facet of either cognition or interaction (or both) in different contexts (CALL and EFL/ESL). Section two hinges on the idea that language teaching and learning is perhaps best conceptualized, understood, and investigated within a complexity theory framework which accounts for the dynamicity and interrelatedness of the variables involved. Viewing TBLT from a sociocultural lens is what connects the chapters included in the third section. Finally, the fourth section views TBLT from pedagogical and curricular vantage points.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union. Current grammatical knowledge about particular sign languages is fragmentary and of varying reliability, and it appears scattered in scientific publications where the description is often intertwined with the analysis. In general, comprehensive grammars are a rarity. The SignGram Blueprint is an innovative tool for the grammar writer: a full-fledged guide to describing all components of the grammars of sign languages in a thorough and systematic way, and with the highest scientific standards. The work builds on the existing knowledge in Descriptive Linguistics, but also on the insights from Theoretical Linguistics. It consists of two main parts running in parallel: the Checklist with all the grammatical features and phenomena the grammar writer can address, and the accompanying Manual with the relevant background information (definitions, methodological caveats, representative examples, tests, pointers to elicitation materials and bibliographical references). The areas covered are Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, Syntax and Meaning. The Manual is endowed with hyperlinks that connect information across the work and with a pop-up glossary. The SignGram Blueprint will be a landmark for the description of sign language grammars in terms of quality and quantity.

To date Melusine as an example of a literary book that has over the centuries reached different groups of readers has above all been an object of research for scholars of literary studies.This volume is the first time that the entire history of the transmission of the work from the 15th to the early 19th centuries has been studied from an interdisciplinary approach."

The ability to speak two or more languages is a common human experience, whether for children born into bilingual families, young people enrolled in foreign language classes, or mature and older adults learning and using more than one language to meet life's needs and desires. This Handbook offers a developmentally oriented and socially contextualized survey of research into individual bilingualism, comprising the learning, use and, as the case may be, unlearning of two or more spoken and signed languages and language varieties. A wide range of topics is covered, from ideologies, policy, the law, and economics, to exposure and input, language education, measurement of bilingual abilities, attrition and forgetting, and giftedness in bilinguals. Also explored are cross- and intra-disciplinary connections with psychology, clinical linguistics, second language acquisition, education, cognitive science, neurolinguistics, contact linguistics, and sign language research.

'Metonymy' is a type of figurative language used in everyday conversation, a form of shorthand that allows us to use our shared knowledge to communicate with fewer words than we would otherwise need. 'I'll pencil you in' and 'let me give you a hand' are both examples of metonymic language. Metonymy serves a wide range of communicative functions, such as textual cohesion, humour, irony, euphemism and hyperbole - all of which play a key role in the development of language and discourse communities. Using authentic data throughout, this book shows how metonymy operates, not just in language, but also in gesture, sign language, art, music, film and advertising. It explores the role of metonymy in cross-cultural communication, along with the challenges it presents to language learners and translators. Ideal for researchers and students in linguistics and literature, as well as teachers and general readers interested in the art of communication.

This book examines the concept of meaning and our general understanding of reality in a legal and philosophical context. Starting from the premise that meaning is a matter of linguistic and other forms of articulation, it considers the inherent philosophical consequences. Part I presents Klages', Derrida's, Von Hofmannsthal's and Wittgenstein's explorations of silence as a source of articulation and meaning. Debates about 20th century psychologism gave the attitude concept a pivotal role; it illustrates the importance of the discovery that a word is globally qualified as 'the basic unit of language'. This is mirrored in the fact that we understand reality as a matter of particles and thus interpret the real as a component of an all-embracing 'particle story'. Each chapter of the book focuses on an aspect of legal semiotics related to the chapter's theme: for instance on the meaning of a Judge's 'Saying for Law', on law students training in varying attitudes or on the ties between law and language. Part II of the book illustrates our general understanding of reality as a matter of particles and partitioning, and examines texts that prove that particle thinking is basic for our meaning concept. It shows that physics, quantum theory, holism, and modern brain research focusing on human linguistic capabilities, confirm their ties to the particle story. In contrast, the book concludes that partitions and particles are neither a fact in the history of the cosmos nor a determinant of knowledge and the sciences, and that meaning is a process: a constellation rather than a fixation. This is manifest once one understands meaning as the result of continuously changing attitudes, which create our narratives on cosmos and creation. The book proposes a new key for meaning: a linguistic occurrence anchored in dimensions of human narrativity.

The "Random House Webster's Compact American Sign Language Dictionary" is a treasury of over 4,500 signs for the novice and experienced user alike. It includes complete descriptions of each sign, plus full-torso illustrations. There is also a subject index for easy reference as well as alternate signs for the same meaning.

This volume elucidates several key factors of the signed languages used in select international Deaf communities. Kristin Mulrooney studies ASL users to delve into the reasons behind the perceived differences in how men and women fingerspell. Bruce Sofinski assesses the current state of transliteration from spoken English to manually coded English, disclosing that competent transliterators do not necessarily produce the desired word-for-sign exchange. In the third chapter, Paul Dudis comments upon a remarkable aspect of discourse in ASL-grounded blends. He discusses how signers map particular concepts onto their hands and bodies, which allows them to enrich their narrative strategies. By observing meetings of deaf and nonsigning hearing people in the Flemish Deaf community, Mieke Van Herreweghe determines whether interpreters' turn-taking practices allow for equal participation. And the final chapter features a respected team of Spanish researchers led by Esperanza Morales-Lopez who investigate the Catalan/Spanish bilingual community in Barcelona. These scholars measure the influence of recent worldwide, Deaf sociopolitical movements advocating signed languages on deaf groups already familiar with bilingual education.

This volume elucidates several key factors of the signed languages used in select international Deaf communities. Kristin Mulrooney studies ASL users to delve into the reasons behind the perceived differences in how men and women fingerspell. Bruce Sofinski assesses the current state of transliteration from spoken English to manually coded English, disclosing that competent transliterators do not necessarily produce the desired word-for-sign exchange. In the third chapter, Paul Dudis comments upon a remarkable aspect of discourse in ASL-grounded blends. He discusses how signers map particular concepts onto their hands and bodies, which allows them to enrich their narrative strategies. By observing meetings of deaf and nonsigning hearing people in the Flemish Deaf community, Mieke Van Herreweghe determines whether interpreters' turn-taking practices allow for equal participation. And the final chapter features a respected team of Spanish researchers led by Esperanza Morales-Lopez who investigate the Catalan/Spanish bilingual community in Barcelona. These scholars measure the influence of recent worldwide, Deaf sociopolitical movements advocating signed languages on deaf groups already familiar with bilingual education.