International Sign (IS) is widely used among deaf people and interpreters at international events, but what exactly is it, what are its linguistic features, where does its lexicon come from, and how is it used at interpreted events? This groundbreaking collection is the first volume to provide answers to these questions. Editors Rachel Rosenstock and Jemina Napier have assembled an international group of renowned linguists and interpreters to examine various aspects of International Sign. Their contributions are divided into three parts: International Sign as a Linguistic System; International Sign in Action--Interpreting, Translation, and Teaching; and International Sign Policy and Language Planning. The chapters cover a range of topics, including the morphosyntactic and discursive structures of interpreted IS, the interplay between conventional linguistic elements and nonconventional gestural elements in IS discourse, how deaf signers who use different signed languages establish communication, Deaf/hearing IS interpreting teams and how they sign depicting verbs, how best to teach foundation-level IS skills, strategies used by IS interpreters when interpreting from IS into English, and explorations of the best ways to prepare interpreters for international events. The work of the editors and contributors in this volume makes International Sign the most comprehensive, research-based analysis of a young but growing field in linguistics and interpretation.

The first volume in the new Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities series presents a rich collection of essays showcasing the breadth and depth of this exciting discipline. Topics of inquiry in the premiere volume include fingerspelling in Langue des Signes Quebecoise (LSQ) in Quebec, Canada; language used by a Navajo family with deaf children; language policy, classroom practice, and multiculturalism in deaf education; aspects of American Sign Language (ASL) discourse and of Filipino Sign Language discourse; and the nature and role of rhetorical language in Deaf social movements. Among the noted contributors are Dominique Machabee, Arlene Blumenthal-Kelly, Jeffrey Davis, Melanie Metzger, Samuel Supalla, Barbara Gerner de Garcia, Liza B. Martinez, Kathy Jankowski, and also Ceil Lucas. Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities affords an invaluable opportunity to assess up-to-date information on sign language linguistics worldwide and its impact on policy and planning in education, interaction with spoken languages, interpreting, and the issues of empowerment.

Gesture in Multiparty Interaction confronts the competing views that exist regarding gesture's relationship to language. In this work, Emily Shaw examines embodied discourses in American Sign Language and spoken English and seeks to establish connections between sign language and co-speech gesture. By bringing the two modalities together, Shaw illuminates the similarities between certain phenomena and presents a unified analysis of embodied discourse that more clearly captures gesture's connection to language as a whole. Shaw filmed Deaf and hearing participants playing a gesture-based game as part of a social game night. Their interactions were then studied using discourse analysis to see whether and how Deaf and hearing people craft discourses through the use of their bodies. This volume examines gesture, not just for its iconic, imagistic qualities, but also as an interactive resource in signed and spoken discourse. In addition, Shaw addresses the key theoretical barriers that prevent a full accounting of gesture's interface with signed and spoken language. Her study pushes further the notion that language is fundamentally embodied.