Ceil Lucas (ed.), The sociolinguistics of sign languages. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. vii, 259. Hb $65.00.

Extract

Although it is easy to do so, The sociolinguistics of sign languages (henceforth SSL) is not to be confused with Ceil Lucas's other books, The sociolinguistics of the deaf community (1989) and its sequels, the Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities series. Whereas the latter volumes aim to present new research in the area of sociolinguistics pertaining to Deaf people and other users of sign languages, the book under review presents almost no new (to those already familiar with this field) information on aspects of sociolinguistic research on members of this language community. Instead, this book should more accurately be seen as a companion volume to her book (with Clayton Valli) Linguistics of American Sign Language: An introduction (2000; henceforth LASL). Like LASL, SSL is intended as a textbook for use in college-level courses dealing with linguistics (or a stand-alone course in sociolinguistics, as was Lucas's intention) of sign languages and Deaf communities.