The Five-Minute Linguist - Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages Third Edition - Caroline Myrick
31. Do Deaf People Everywhere Use the Same Sign Language?
The Five-Minute Linguist - Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages Third Edition - Caroline Myrick
Leila Monaghan [+]
Northern Arizona University
Leila Monaghan teaches Anthropology at Northern Arizona University. She received her Ph.D. in linguistic anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles and her dissertation work was with the New Zealand Deaf community. She also has a recent MA in history from the University of Wyoming. Her publications include a co-edited book Many Ways to be Deaf (Gallaudet University Press, 2003), a 2002 Annual Review of Anthropology article on Deaf communities with Richard Senghas, HIV/AIDS and Deafness (co-edited with Constanze Schmaling, Forest Books, 2006), and “Women at Little Bighorn” in Montana Magazine of Western History (2017).
Description
Sign languages have all the linguistic features that spoken languages have (except sound). Sign languages have complex grammars, so that words can be strung together into sentences, and sentences into stories. With signs, any topic, from concrete to abstract, from street slang to physics can be discussed. Moreover, sign languages vary, just as spoken languages do.