Sociolinguistic Variation in American Sign Language (Volume 7)

by Ceil Lucas, Clayton Valli, Robert Bayley

The culmination of a seven-year project, this volume provides a complete description of American Sign Language (ASL) variation. For four decades, linguists have studied how people from varying regions and backgrounds have different ways of saying the same thing. For example, in English some people say “test,” while others say “tes’”, dropping the final “t.” Noted scholars Ceil Lucas, Robert Bayley, and Clayton Valli led a team of exceptional researchers in applying techniques for analyzing spoken language variation to ASL. Their observations at the phonological, lexical, morphological, and syntactic levels demonstrate that ASL variation correlates with many of the same driving social factors of spoken languages, including age, socioeconomic class, gender, ethnic background, region, and sexual orientation. Internal constraints that mandate variant choices for spoken languages have been compared to ASL as well, with intriguing results. Sociolinguistic Variation in American Sign Language stands alone as the new standard for students and scholars committed to this discipline.

Genres: Linguistics

192 pages, Hardcover

First published August 8, 2001

About the author

Ceil Lucas, author of How I Got Here: A Memoir, is professor emerita of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., where she taught linguistics through American Sign Language for 31 years before retiring in 2013. She began teaching Italian at all levels in 1973 and continues to do so. Lucas was born in the United States, but raised from ages 5 to 21 in Guatemala City and in Rome, Italy. She has edited or co-authored 22 books and also is editor of the scholarly journal, Sign Language Studies, published by Gallaudet University Press.