Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Figures -- Tables -- Contributors -- Foreword -- Preface and acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Multilingualism: The global approach to sign languages -- Sign languages used by hearing people -- How many languages are there? -- Mutual intelligibility -- The problem of nomenclature for sign languages -- "Planned" signed languages that are not used by Deaf communities -- The "standard" and the importance of dictionaries -- Statistical approaches to the definition of languages -- Sign languages in Europe -- Historical relationships -- World politics -- Educational systems -- Suggested Readings -- Exercises -- 3 Bilingualism and language contact -- Societal and individual bilingualism in the hearing world -- Canada -- Belgium -- Singapore -- Societal and individual bilingualism in the Deaf world -- Martha's Vineyard in the USA -- A Yucatec Mayan village, Mexico -- Desa Kolok in Bali, Indonesia -- Bilingualism in most of the Deaf world -- Diglossia -- The transfer hypothesis: The influence of a first language upon the second -- Language shift -- Loan vocabulary in spoken languages -- "Loan" phenomena in sign language situations -- Mouthing -- Pidgins and creoles -- Code switching and code mixing -- Conclusions -- Suggested readings -- Exercises -- 4 Sociolinguistic variation -- The study of linguistic variation -- The sociolinguistic variable -- Variable units in spoken languages -- Variable processes in spoken languages -- Linguistic variation in spoken languages -- Early studies of variation in spoken languages -- Large-scale urban studies -- Recent research on sociolinguistic variation in spoken languages -- Sociolinguistic variation and language change -- Summary -- Linguistic variation in sign languages -- Variation in ASL.

Research on African American signing -- An international perspective on variation in sign languages -- Perspectives on the structure of sign languages -- Sign languages vs. spoken languages -- Variable units in sign and spoken languages -- Variable processes in spoken and sign languages -- Internal constraints on spoken and sign languages -- Social constraints particular to Deaf communities -- Three recent studies of variation in ASL -- An exploratory case study of a phonological variable -- A large scale quantitative study: Lucas et al. (2001) on DEAF -- Summary of the studies -- Methodological issues for the studies -- Conclusions -- Suggested readings -- Exercises -- NOTES -- 5 Discourse analysis -- Discourse structure -- Discourse action and interaction -- Context and discourse -- Methodological approaches to discourse analysis -- Speech act theory -- Interactional sociolinguistics -- Ethnography of communication -- Pragmatics -- Conversation analysis -- Variation analysis -- Features of sign language discourse -- Turntaking -- Conversational repair -- Discourse markers -- Constructing dialogue and action -- Cohesion -- Rhythm, rhyme and repetition -- The relevance of discourse genre -- Conclusion -- Suggested readings -- Exercises -- 6 Language planning and policy -- The nature and purposes of language planning -- Ideologies of language policy -- The language planning process -- Language rights and language policy -- Evaluating language policies -- Conclusions -- Suggested readings -- Exercises -- NOTES -- APPENDIX 6.1 STATEMENT ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE NATIONAL SIGN LANGUAGES OF THE DEAF PASSED AT THE THIRD EUROPEAN CONGRESS… -- Comment -- The statement -- APPENDIX 6.2 WORLD FEDERATION OF THE DEAF CALLS FOR RECOGNITION OF SIGN LANGUAGES -- 7 Language attitudes -- Why study language attitudes? -- Definitions.

Early research on language attitudes -- How are language attitudes studied? -- Content analysis -- Direct measurement -- Indirect measurement -- Questions addressed by language attitude studies -- Attitudes toward languages -- Attitudes toward language groups -- Language and identity -- Theories of language attitudes: Answers to the questions -- Consequences and applications -- Second language -- Employers' hiring practices -- Mass media -- Education -- Changes in language attitudes -- Conclusions -- Suggested readings -- Exercises -- NOTES -- Bibliography -- Index.