Special Collections

Sociolinguistics and Deaf Communities

How do people use sign languages in different situations around the world? How are sign languages distributed globally? What happens when they come in contact with spoken and written languages? These and other questions are explored in this new introduction to the sociolinguistics of sign languages and deaf communities. An international team brings insights and data from a wide range of sign languages, from the USA, Canada, England, Spain, Brazil and Australia. Topics covered include multilingualism in the global deaf community, sociolinguistic variation and change in sign languages, bilingualism and language contact between signed and spoken languages, attitudes towards sign languages, sign language planning and policy, and sign language discourse. Sociolinguistics and Deaf Communities will be welcomed by students of sign language and interpreting, teachers of sign language, and students and academics working in linguistics.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Sociolinguistics of Sign Languages

This is an accessible introduction to the major areas of sociolinguistics as they relate to sign languages and deaf communities. Clearly organized, it brings together a team of leading experts in sign linguistics to survey the field, and covers a wide range of topics including variation, multilingualism, bilingualism, language attitudes, discourse analysis, language policy and planning. Each chapter introduces the key issues in each area of inquiry and provides a comprehensive review of the literature. The book also includes suggestions for further reading and helpful exercises.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Sociolinguistic Variation in American Sign Language

This volume provides a complete description of ASL variation. 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.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Some Kids Are Deaf

Young children are curious about everything and everyone. This book acquaints them with some of the tools which deaf kids use. Other books in the Understanding Differences series are available in this library.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Some Kids Are Deaf

Simple text and photographs describe kids who are deaf, the ways they communicate, and some of their everyday activities. Note to Parents and Teachers The Understanding Differences set supports national social studies standards related to individual development and identity. This book describes children who are deaf and illustrates their special needs. The photographs support early readers in understanding the text. The repetition of words and phrases helps early readers learn new words. This book also introduces early readers to subject-specific vocabulary words, which are defined in the Glossary. Early readers may need assistance to read some words and to use the Table of Content's, Glossary, Read More, Internet Sites, and Index sections of the book.

Date Added: 08/03/2021

Song Without Words

Much has been written about the profoundly deaf, but the lives of the nearly 30 million partially deaf people in the United States today remain hidden. Song without Words tells the astonishing story of a man who, at the age of thirty-four, discovered that he had been deaf since childhood, yet somehow managed to navigate his way through Andover, Yale, and Columbia Law School, and to establish a prestigious international legal career.

Gerald Shea's witty and candid memoir of how he compensated for his deafness--through sheer determination and an amazing ability to translate the melody of vowels. His experience gives fascinating new insight into the nature and significance of language, the meaning of deafness, the fierce controversy between advocates of signing and of oral education, and the longing for full communication that unites us all.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Sound Friendships

From the book Jacket: Sound Friendships is the story of Willa Macy, who lost her hearing when she was fourteen years old, and Honey, a golden retriever, who helped her to discover a new world of independence and security. It is also a story about Hearing Dogs-their background, training, special abilities, and the unique relationship they develop with their owners in working to surmount the barriers of a physical handicap.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Sounds from Silence

The author's interest in the development of improved hearing devices for the deaf arose from his interactions with his own father, who lost his hearing. Having worked in a pharmacy, Graham Clark developed a keen interest in pursuing a medical degree. His research and tenacity led him to develop the multiple contact bionic ear. The book takes us on a journey with the author through his life and his perseverance to develp this device.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Sounds Like Skipper

Skipper is a shaggy-haired Jack Russell, one of the earliest dogs trained in a new scheme to help people suffering from deafness. The author, a permanent researcher for BBC TV, has been deaf since infancy. Modern technology can equip her with a special high-powered hearing aid, but Skipper enables her to live alone, summoning her to doorbells and telephones, waking her when the alarm rings, and warning her of such unexpected hazards as burglars or fire alarms. The author's story of life with Skipper is full of insights into the plight of the deaf in contemporary society.

Kerena tells her story of how she received Skipper a Jack Russell terror mix dog, and how his presence changed her life. She also discusses some problems that she experienced as a almost deaf person in a hearing world, and her experiences with the deaf community too.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Sounds of Silence

Border Patrol agent Eli Carmichael knew the deaf child he'd found outside a Mexican orphanage was harboring a dark secret--she was carrying a bloodstained knife and was clearly traumatized. To keep her safe, he turned to trusted neighbor Isabel Valenzuela. A sense of duty had kept Eli close to his fellow agent's widow and her young son over the past year, and now Eli was spending more time with Isabel and the kids, trying to determine exactly what the girl had seen. Under Isabel's gentle care, the child began to open up. But the killers were close by, and determined to silence the girl forever. . . .

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Spencer Tracy

His full name was Spencer Bonaventure Tracy. He was called "The Gray Fox" by Frank Sinatra; other actors called him the "The Pope."

Spencer Tracy's image on-screen was that of a self-reliant man whose sense of rectitude toward others was matched by his sense of humor toward himself. Whether he was Father Flanagan of Boys Town, Clarence Darrow of Inherit the Wind, or the crippled war veteran in Bad Day at Black Rock, Tracy was forever seen as a pillar of strength.In his several comedy roles opposite Katharine Hepburn (Woman of the Year and Adam's Rib among them) or in Father of the Bride with Elizabeth Taylor, Tracy was the sort of regular American guy one could depend on.

Now James Curtis, acclaimed biographer of Preston Sturges ("Definitive" --Variety), James Whale, and W. C. Fields ("By far the fullest, fairest, and most touching account . . . we have yet had. Or are likely to have" --Richard Schickel, The New York Times Book Review, cover review), gives us the life of one of the most revered screen actors of his generation.

Curtis writes of Tracy's distinguished career, his deep Catholicism, his devoted relationship to his wife, his drinking that got him into so much trouble, and his twenty-six-year-long bond with his partner on-screen and off, Katharine Hepburn. Drawing on Tracy's personal papers and writing with the full cooperation of Tracy's daughter, Curtis tells the rich story of the brilliant but haunted man at the heart of the legend. We see him from his boyhood in Milwaukee; given over to Dominican nuns ("They drill that religion in you"); his years struggling in regional shows and stock (Tracy had a photographic memory and an instinct for inhabiting a character from within); acting opposite his future wife, Louise Treadwell; marrying and having two children, their son, John, born deaf.

We see Tracy's success on Broadway, his turning out mostly forgettable programmers with the Fox Film Corporation, and going to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and getting the kinds of roles that had eluded him in the past--a streetwise priest opposite Clark Gable in San Francisco; a screwball comedy, Libeled Lady; Kipling's classic of the sea, Captains Courageous. Three years after arriving at MGM, Tracy became America's top male star.

We see how Tracy embarked on a series of affairs with his costars . . . making Northwest Passage and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which brought Ingrid Bergman into his life. By the time the unhappy shoot was over, Tracy, looking to do a comedy, made Woman of the Year. Its unlikely costar: Katharine Hepburn.We see Hepburn making Tracy her life's project--protecting and sustaining him in the difficult job of being a top-tier movie star.

And we see Tracy's wife, Louise, devoting herself to studying how deaf children could be taught to communicate orally with the hearing and speaking world.Curtis writes that Tracy was ready to retire when producer-director Stanley Kramer recruited him for Inherit the Wind--a collaboration that led to Judgment at Nuremberg, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and Tracy's final picture, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner . . . A rich, vibrant portrait--the most intimate and telling yet of this complex man considered by many to be the actor's actor.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Spider's Web

In the spring of 666 A.D., Sister Fidelma is summoned to the small Irish village of Araglin. An advocate of the Brehon law courts as well as a religieuse, she is to investigate the murder of the local chieftain. While traveling there with her friend Brother Eadulf, a band of brigands attacks the roadside hostel in which they are staying and attempts to burn them out. While Fidelma and Eadulf manage to beat back their attackers, this incident is only the first in a series that troubles them. When they arrive at Araglin, they find out that the chieftain was murdered in the middle of the night, and next to his body, a local deaf-mute man was found holding the bloody knife that killed him.
While everyone else seems convinced that the man's guilt is obvious, sister Fidelma is not so sure. As she investigates, she's convinced that there is something happening in the seemingly quiet town--something that everyone is trying very hard to keep from her. In what may be the most challenging and confusing situation that she has yet faced, Fidelma must somehow uncover the truth behind the chieftain's murderer and find out what is really going on beneath the quiet surface of this rural town.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor of the Telephone

A readable, interesting biography of the famous inventor, paying equal attention to his scientific achievements, his personal life, and his lifelong work with the deaf. There are several odd omissions, though, including why Bell adopted the middle name Graham; the spilled-acid aspect of the first telephone message and Bell's demonstration of the telephone before Queen Victoria.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Story of Beautiful Girl

It is 1968. Lynnie, a young white woman with a developmental disability, and Homan, an African American deaf man, are locked away in an institution, the School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, and have been left to languish, forgotten. Deeply in love, they escape, and find refuge in the farmhouse of Martha, a retired schoolteacher and widow. But the couple is not alone-Lynnie has just given birth to a baby girl. When the authorities catch up to them that same night, Homan escapes into the darkness, and Lynnie is caught. But before she is forced back into the institution, she whispers two words to Martha: "Hide her." And so begins the 40-year epic journey of Lynnie, Homan, Martha, and baby Julia-lives divided by seemingly insurmountable obstacles, yet drawn together by a secret pact and extraordinary love.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

T4

It is 1939. Paula Becker, thirteen years old and deaf, lives with her family in a rural German town. As rumors swirl of disabled children quietly disappearing, a priest comes to her family’s door with an offer to shield Paula from an uncertain fate. When the sanctuary he offers is fleeting, Paula needs to call upon all her strength to stay one step ahead of the Nazis.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Talking Hands

Imagine a village where everyone "speaks" sign language. Just such a village - an isolated Bedouin community in Israel with an unusually high rate of deafness - is at the heart of Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind. There, an indigenous sign language has sprung up, used by deaf and hearing villagers alike. It is a language no outsider has been able to decode, until now.

A New York Times reporter trained as a linguist, Margalit Fox is the only Western journalist to have set foot in this remarkable village. In Talking Hands, she follows an international team of scientists that is unraveling this mysterious language.

Because the sign language of the village has arisen completely on its own, outside the influence of any other language, it is a living demonstration of the "language instinct," man's inborn capacity to create language. If the researchers can decode this language, they will have helped isolate ingredients essential to all human language, signed and spoken. But as Talking Hands grippingly shows, their work in the village is also a race against time, because the unique language of the village may already be endangered.

Talking Hands offers a fascinating introduction to the signed languages of the world- languages as beautiful, vital and emphatically human as any other- explaining why they are now furnishing cognitive scientists with long-sought keys to understanding how language works...

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Talk Talk

Over the past twenty-five years, T.C. Boyle has earned wide acclaim and an enthusiastic following with such adventurous, inimitable novels as The Tortilla Curtain, Drop City, and The Road to Wellville. For his riveting eleventh novel, Boyle offers readers the closest thing to a thriller he has ever written, a tightly scripted page turner about the trials of Dana Halter, a thirty-three-year-old deaf woman whose identity has been stolen. Featuring a woman in the lead role (a Boyle first), Talk Talk is both a suspenseful chase across America and a moving story about language, love, and identity from one of America's most versatile and entertaining novelists.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Train Go Sorry

This portrait of New York's Lexington School for the Deaf is not just a work of journalism. It is also a memoir, since Leah Hager Cohen grew up on the school's campus and her father is its superintendent. As a hearing person raised among the deaf, Cohen appreciates both the intimate textures of that silent world and the gulf that separates it from our own.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Triumph of the Spirit

In 1988 the world's only deaf liberal arts university, Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. was ready for its next president. The Board of Trustees chose a hearing president who knew nothing about deafness. Unrest had been building on campus over this possibility, especially as there were highly qualified Deaf applicants. When the hearing person was selected and announced, the students exploded in protest. The next 7 days were covered by the national and international news media. What happened at Gallaudet had enormous worldwide impact. Since that protest, Deaf people have proudly advanced in all occupations. The DPN Movement has been likened to a civil rights movement for Deaf people. The author, Angel Ramos, PhD., was directly involved in the protest. Note: all spelling errors were in the print text.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Typhon’s Children

To the new colonists, the teeming, ocean-dominated planet of Typhon seems a wondrous and exotic paradise--until the land erupts with incomprehensible violence, consuming the colony in a fiery hell. Their supplies lost, the survivors find themselves struggling against a world where death wears many guises. But the deadliest menace strikes from within--for every child born on Typhon suffers strange, degenerative mutations. Unless the situation can be reversed, the Typhon colony is doomed. Per Langstaff is a scientist obsessed with the life-and-death mystery, certain that the answer to the colony's survival lies with the virulent planet itself. His staunchest ally, Dilani, is a rebellious young girl born deaf to sound and convention, an orphan as unruly as the oceans themselves. Together these two outcasts, bound by a shared love of the depths, embark on an unforgettable journey that will take them to the utmost reaches of humanity . . . and beyond.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Understanding Deaf Culture

This book presents a 'Traveller's Guide' to Deaf Culture, starting from the premise that Deaf cultures have an important contribution to make to other academic disciplines, and human lives in general. Within and outside Deaf communities, there is a need for an account of the new concept of Deaf culture, which enables readers to assess its place alongside work on other minority cultures and multilingual discourses. The book aims to assess the concepts of culture, on their own terms and in their many guises and to apply these to Deaf communities. The author illustrates the pitfalls which have been created for those communities by the medical concept of 'deafness' and contrasts this with his new concept of "Deafhood", a process by which every Deaf child, family and adult implicitly explains their existence in the world to themselves and each other.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Unheard

Swiller spent his early years in frustrated limbo on the sidelines of the hearing world. So he decided to abandon the well-trodden path after college, setting out to find a place so far removed that his deafness would become irrelevant.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Unspeakable

There are no words. . .

Holly Summers is deaf, but she "hears" thanks to her immense talent for lip-reading. A child welfare officer, Holly moonlights for the Portland, Oregon, police, using her unique gift to aid in criminal investigations -- including one into the case of a recent string of women who have vanished without a trace. There is no sound. . .

Witnessing unimaginable evil in the abuse cases she handles, Holly fights every day to salvage broken young lives. But her good works spark plenty of enemies; someone has targeted this avenging angel with a supernatural vow to harm her. And the terror begins when Holly's young daughter disappears. There are no dreams as dark as the horrors some men do. Fending off the shadows of an unearthly predator and the very real threats facing a woman in a man's world, Holly must listen to her deepest instincts for survival -- to save the one person for whom she is living.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

A Wall of Light

"I am Sonya Vronsky, professor of mathematics at Tel Aviv University, and this is the story of a day in late August. On this remarkable day I kissed a student, pursued a lover, found my father, and left my brother." So begins A Wall of Light, a novel which chronicles a single day in the life of Sonya, a thirty-two-year-old deaf woman about to break out of her predictable routine.

Sonya lives in Tel Aviv with her protective half-brother, Kostya; their household has dwindled from five to two. Anna, their mother, is now in a nursing home and Noah, Kostya's son, is living in Berlin. Kostya, wracked with guilt for the tragedies that have befallen Sonya, also grapples with the memory of his wife, Iris, a lawyer murdered in the course of a dangerous investigation seventeen years earlier.As we move through Sonya's day, Noah and Anna narrate their stories as well. Noah's journal entries cover the years 1980-1993, and Anna's letters to Andrei, her married lover in Russia, are written in 1957, after Anna has emigrated to Israel to build a new life for herself and her son, Kostya.

While Sonya's story moves rapidly through the events of a single day, Noah and Anna's voices take the reader back in time, filling in the circumstances that have led Sonya to this pivotal moment. We learn that Sonya has already endured two catastrophes. At age twelve, a medical mishap leaves her deaf, and at eighteen, while studying at university in Beersheba, Sonya is assaulted by two hoodlums. Throughout the novel, Sonya's experiences, instigated by both human error and human evil, are echoed by the larger, political violence that haunts modern Israel.

While Noah's and Anna's voices shed light on Sonya's journey, they also provide insights into the political and cultural fabric of Israel from the mid 1950s to the present. Noah's journal entries, starting with his tenth birthday and ending shortly after his army service, map his coming of age. We see him wrestling with his sexual identity and first sexual encounters, the fallout from his mother's leftist politics, and his own conscription to the army. Anna's secret letters to Andrei offer an outsider's perspective on the new Israeli state.

The remarkable events of Sonya's day are set in motion when her brother gives her an antihistamine. Overcome with sleepiness, she dismisses her morning class early, asking only one student, Matar, to stay behind. She wants to understand what lies behind his unusual expression. He answers that he has been involved in war crimes, and surprises Sonya by kissing her. Sonya feels that she has been roused from a long slumber and as the novel progresses we see the ways in which her awakened desire shapes her choices. She decides to take a taxi home from the university and impulsively invites the taxi driver inside and seduces him. He complies, but when she tells him she's deaf, he flees in confusion. Sonya is convinced that she has fallen in love with him, and decides to pursue him. She solicits her brother's help and sets out to find her lover.

Sonya's search gains in intensity and purpose as she travels to East Jerusalem. There she encounters the walls that prevent Palestinians from moving freely through the West Bank. After an Alice in Wonderland-like journey past numerous obstacles, Sonya finally makes it to her lover's house. This second encounter leads Sonya to a central revelation: the identity of her father.As this day of awakened desire and dispelled secrets closes, Sonya is able to step out from under the protective wing of her brother into a life that reflects both the ambiguity and uncertainty of contemporary Israel and her own personal possibilities.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

When the Mind Hears

Impassioned, polemical, at times even virulent, the author shows immense scholarship, powers of historical reconstruction, and deep empathy for the world of the deaf. The unimaginable world of those who have been born deaf is made almost imaginable by Lane's account of their history. The author's passion and directness are delivered through the mouth of one of his subjects, himself deaf, who became an intellectual leader of the deaf community in France and then in America. The story he tells is extraordinary and is perhaps the best illustration of what it means to see the condition and the patient as a whole.

Date Added: 03/08/2018