Hill (American Sign Language licensuring, U. of North Carolina-Greensboro) explores the perceptions of linguistic features in different forms of signing--such as American Sign Language (ASL), contact signing, and Signed English--among social groups of the American Deaf community that vary by generation, age of acquisition, and race. His four years of research explored perceptions of signing types, effects of social information on the perceptions of signing types, evaluation of signing, and description of signing. He finds that ASL is much more accepted now than it was during the 1960's when William Stokoe first showed that it is a legitimate language, but many--especially older people--still believe that English is better. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Hill’s new study shows various contradictions in the use of signed languages by exploring the linguistic and social factors that govern such stereotypical perceptions of social groups about signing differences.
