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  • Deaf around the World: The Impact of Language
  • Pilar Piñar (bio)
Deaf around the World: The Impact of Language, edited by Gaurav Mathur and Donna Jo Napoli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 416 pp., paperback, $39.95, ISBN: 978-0199732-531)

In Deaf around the World: The Impact of Language, editors Gaurav Mathur and Donna Jo Napoli aim to create a forum for sign language scholars and activists working with Deaf communities worldwide. The goal is to afford scholars a better understanding of how their research can serve the communities they study and to provide Deaf activists with a deeper awareness of the role of language in the empowerment of their communities. The volume includes twenty-five papers organized into twelve chapters. Part I features seven chapters on sign language topics. Part II contains five chapters on social issues. True to its title, the volume broadly samples topics covering more than twenty one countries from all corners of the earth.

Carol Padden opens chapter 1 with a discussion of sign language geography and focuses on the Middle East and North America. James Woodward responds with a discussion of methodological issues affecting historical studies of sign languages and cites examples from Southeast Asia and Central America. These studies exemplify the dynamic nature of sign languages in a fundamentally accessible manner.

In chapter 2 Gaurav Mathur and Christian Rathmann, and Paul Dudis, in response present analyses of sign language morphology and syntax. They explore sign language's unique spatial and depictive resources and feature ASL and German and Japanese Sign Language (DGS and Nihon Shuwa, respectively). Examples and illustrations illuminate some of the technical aspects, but the studies require a certain familiarity with formal linguistics, which might limit their audience. [End Page 450]

Chapter 3 features research on second language learning with regard to sign languages, specifically among hearing learners. Deborah Chen Pichler presents preliminary data on handshape production, and Russell S. Rosen calls for studies that go beyond the modality difference issue. While somewhat orthogonal to the lives of deaf individuals, these studies provide a glimpse into an incipient area of research and suggest directions for further exploration.

Next, Ann Senghas and Marie Coppola (chapter 4) examine the transformation of the pointing gesture into a grammaticalized sign in Nicaraguan Sign Language, stressing the role of the community in creating and naturally transforming the language. This chapter makes a complex argument in a very accessible style, without compromising either depth or quality. In response, Roland Pfau proposes a model for the diachronic shift of pointing signs and notes how Senghas and Coppola's data contribute to a better understanding of gesture's role in language development.

Chapter 5 touches on the linguistics/psychology interface, with both Sandra Wood and Cyril Courtin weighing in on the impact of delayed language exposure on linguistic and cognitive development. Wood reports data on late learners' acquisition of topicalization in Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS), while Courtin discusses the critical role of early exposure to a full language model in the development of theory of mind. Courtin draws attention to countries like France, where education in sign language is virtually nonexistent, and discusses the implications of such misguided educational policies, particularly for deaf children from hearing families.

In chapter 6 Angela Nonaka reports on the range of interrogative expressions in Ban Khor Sign Language (an isolate in Thailand), while Ulrike Zeshan emphasizes the importance of village sign languages—isolates that arise in small, nonindustrial communities—in the development of a comprehensive sign language typology. Like chapter 1, this work highlights sign language diversity and the importance of local sign languages both for their intrinsic value to their communities and for their contribution to our understanding of human language.

Donna Jo Napoli and Rachel Sutton-Spence close part I with a reflection on the origins of language, arguing that sign language might have preceded spoken language. The jury, however, is still out [End Page 451] on this matter. Recent discoveries that reveal a shared biological basis for signed and spoken language (i.e., Petitto et al., in press) might be more in accordance with Adam Kendon's response in this chapter, in which he proposes that...

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