In Reading Between the Signs, Anna Mindess provides a perspective on a culture that is not widely understood - American Deaf culture. With the collaboration of three distinguished Deaf consultants, Mindess explores the implications of cultural differences at the intersection of the Deaf and hearing worlds.Used in sign language interpreter training programs worldwide, Reading Between the Signs is a resource for students, working interpreters and other professionals...

This helpful workbook functions as a companion and supplement to Anna Mindess's earlier book, Reading Between the Signs: A Cultural Guide for Sign Language Interpreters, a recognized classic text for sign language interpreters and ASL students. It is arranged to correspond with the theory presented in the book and expands its focus to the relativity of politeness and the distinction between direct and indirect communication styles, both of which are important elements in comparing Deaf and...

Imagine being able to ask your poodle, “Who’s at the door?” and having her respond, “It’s Katy.” Or asking your golden retriever, “Do you want a treat?” and him responding, “No, water.” Or asking your Border collie, “Which toy do you want?” and getting the response, “Stick.”If you’ve ever wondered what dogs would tell us if they could, now you can find out. The K9Sign system teaches dogs to communicate to us–making it a first in any dog training book categ...

An American Sign Language Guide helps someone trying to learn sign language, by allowing the person to study at their own pace and in their own time. Also, an American Sign Language Guide allows the person who is wanting to learn Sign Language to study anywhere that is convenient for them. This could be; a classroom, the person's residence, the library, or any other place that the person feels comfortable reading the guide and practicing the techniques the guide teaches.

The most comprehensive overview available, this Handbook is an essential guide to sociolinguistics today. Reflecting the breadth of research in the field, it surveys a range of topics and approaches in the study of language variation and use in society. As well as linguistic perspectives, the handbook includes insights from anthropology, social psychology, the study of discourse and power, conversation analysis, theories of style and styling, language contact and applied sociolinguistics. ...

What ties Americans to one another? What unifies a nation of citizens with different racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds? These were the dilemmas faced by Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as they sought ways to bind the newly United States together.In A is for American, award-winning historian Jill Lepore portrays seven men who turned to language to help shape a new nation’s character and boundaries. From Noah Webster’s attempts to standard...

This book engages with English in globalization, re-examining and re-interpreting the contemporary contexts of its acquisition and use. The chapters contained in this book weave together four inter-related themes that define the role of English in the global context: the centrality of structure, relationships of interdependence, social constructions of difference and reproduction of inequality.

This book tells the dramatic and often surprising story of the learning of the Irish language by Irish Republican prisoners held in the infamous H-block cells during the bloody political conflict in Northern Ireland. Using research methods and techniques, the author closely analyses the emergence of the Irish language amongst republican prisoners and ex prisoners in Northern Ireland from the 1970s up until the present. This pioneering study shows how the language was used exclusively in pa...

This book describes the most important kinds of texts in English and introduces the methodological techniques used to analyse them. Three analytical approaches are introduced and compared, describing a wide range of texts from the perspectives of register, genre and style. The primary focus of the book is on the analysis of registers. Part 1 introduces an analytical framework for studying registers, genre conventions, and styles. Part 2 provides detailed descriptions of particular text var...

Do you find it hard to make friends? Do you struggle to know what to say to start a conversation?In this book, Paul Jordan, who is on the autism spectrum, explains how to make sense of everyday social situations you might encounter at school, university or in other group settings. He reveals how, with the use of just 65 simple words, it is possible to create 'scripts for thinking' that break conversations down into small chunks and help you to think of what to say, whether you are ...

A handy beginner's guide, this textbook introduces the various stages of linguistic fieldwork, from the preparation of the work to the presentation of the results. Drawing on over forty years of fieldwork experience between them, in over two dozen languages, the authors pack the book with examples and anecdotes from their experiences and include practical exercises for students to test what they have learned. Independent of any particular perspective, the methods can be applied to a wide r...

Each time we take a turn in conversation we indicate what we know and what we think others know. However, knowledge is neither static nor absolute. It is shaped by those we interact with and governed by social norms - we monitor one another for whether we are fulfilling our rights and responsibilities with respect to knowledge, and for who has relatively more rights to assert knowledge over some state of affairs. This book brings together an international team of leading linguists, sociolo...