Choosing how to write sign language: a sociolinguistic perspective
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Jason Hopkins
Abstract
This article introduces the reader to the sociolinguistic issues surrounding the adoption of a writing system for sign languages. Initially, some background on sign language and Deaf culture is presented, followed by a discussion of several alternatives for writing sign languages and how these alternatives have been used and/or adopted. Sign languages in most parts of the world compete with spoken languages (languages that have established written traditions), resulting in diglossia. Though many scholars who work with the deaf community have tried to develop ways to write sign language(s), many Deaf do not feel the need for a writing system, either because they use video media or because they see writing as best done in the dominant language in their diglossic situation.
© 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
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- The sociolinguistics of script choice: an introduction
- Writing Tuareg — the three script options
- The Khom script of the Kommodam Rebellion
- A social orthography of identity: the N'ko literacy movement in West Africa
- The ascendancy of the Cham script: how a literacy workshop became the catalyst
- Missionary contributions toward the revaluation of Hangeul in late nineteenth-century Korea
- Choosing how to write sign language: a sociolinguistic perspective
- Indexicality, voice, and context in the distribution of Cherokee scripts
- Script change in Azerbaijan: acts of identity
- Script selection for Tibetan-related languages in multiscriptal environments
- Nonconventional script choice in Japan
- Script choice among the Miao in China
- Emblems of independence: script choice in post-Soviet Turkmenistan
- Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures, edited by Seth L. Sanders
Articles in the same Issue
- The sociolinguistics of script choice: an introduction
- Writing Tuareg — the three script options
- The Khom script of the Kommodam Rebellion
- A social orthography of identity: the N'ko literacy movement in West Africa
- The ascendancy of the Cham script: how a literacy workshop became the catalyst
- Missionary contributions toward the revaluation of Hangeul in late nineteenth-century Korea
- Choosing how to write sign language: a sociolinguistic perspective
- Indexicality, voice, and context in the distribution of Cherokee scripts
- Script change in Azerbaijan: acts of identity
- Script selection for Tibetan-related languages in multiscriptal environments
- Nonconventional script choice in Japan
- Script choice among the Miao in China
- Emblems of independence: script choice in post-Soviet Turkmenistan
- Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures, edited by Seth L. Sanders
