chapter on Spanish SL communities

[Mark Mandel]

This is taken from a review by Silvia Rodriguez
of _Multilingualism in Spain_, edited by M. Teresa Turell.
The book contains a chapter by Rosa Vallverdu on the sign language
communities of Spain, in the section on "smaller, long-established"
language minorities, as distinguished from the "larger established
minority groups", the "other established minorities", and "the new
migrant minorities". "[...]" shows where I've deleted chunks of the review,
which appeared in LINGUIST List #12.1066
(http://linguistlist.org/issues/12/12-1066.html).

(As I write this the publisher's website, http://www.multilingual-matters.com ,
is broken for searches and many links.)

   Mark A. Mandel : Dragon Systems, a Lernout & Hauspie company
          Mark_Mandel at dragonsys.com : Senior Linguist
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02460, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com

     =================================

Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 09:57:22 -0400
From: Silvia Rodriguez <rodriguezs at cofc.edu>
Subject: Review: Multilingualism in Spain.

     ------------------------

M. Teresa Turell, ed. (2001)  Multilingualism in Spain:  Sociolinguistic
and psycholinguistic aspects of linguistic minority groups.  Clevedon, UK:
Multilingual Matters Ltd., hardback, xv, 389 pp., Multilingual Matters
Series.

Silvia Rodriguez, College of Charleston.

SYNOPSIS

This book contains a collection of articles on linguistic diversity in
Spain.  It describes Spain's multilingual make-up including the larger
established communities such as Catalan, Basque, and Galician, but also
smaller established communities, and new migrant communities.  It is
well-organized and very readable.

Multilingualism in Spain presents the topics from an interdisciplinary
approach.  The editor and the contributors come from different fields of
study such as Applied Linguistics, Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology, and
Geography.

The book is organized as follows:

     [...]

After the introductory chapter, the book is divided into four parts:

     [...]

Part II explores the smaller established minorities such as the Occitan
speech community of the Aran Valley (Chapter 5, Jordi Suils and Angel
Huguet); the Asturian speech community (Chapter 6, Roberto
Gonzalez-Quevedo); and the sign language communities (Chapter 7, Rosa
Vallverdu).

     [...]

The sign language communities chapter addresses the history of sign
language in Spain, its status today, its characteristics, and domains.  It
also explores the controversy about the education of deaf children, and the
difficulties and challenges in everyday life including the lack of
sensitivity and understanding by mainstream society.  The chapter finishes
with a description of patterns of language use and behavior.

     [...]

BIOGRAPHY [of the reviewer]

Silvia Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the College of
Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina.  Her research interests include
interlanguage and cross cultural pragmatics, bilingualism and
multilingualism issues in Spain, and foreign language curriculum and
instruction.

Silvia Rodríguez, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Spanish
Department of Hispanic Studies
College of Charleston
66 George Street
Charleston, SC  29424-0001
<rodriguezs at cofc.edu>