What are you teaching in your "sign linguistics" course?

[Scott Liddell]

Dear Daisuke,
Here is a little different slant on this issue.  The Department of
Linguistics at Gallaudet University (http://linguistics.gallaudet.edu/)
offers both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in linguistics.  Our department has
a heavy focus on sign language structure.  We have the luxury, for
example, of being able to devote an entire course to ASL Morphology,
etc.   For years we have had an undergraduate overview of ASL structure
course.  A few years ago we developed another course for undergraduates
that addresses an issue not so far discussed in response to your
question -- helping students see a difference between a sign language,
codes used to represent a spoken language, and signs used as part of
simultaneous communication.  This is a very tough issue for students to
get a hold of and requires discussing issues of grammar and structure
in helping to distinguish between language, code, and the signed
portion of Simultaneous Communication.
I hope this helps.
Scott Liddell






On Nov 4, 2003, at 5:12 AM, daisuke at yahoo.com wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I need some insightful ideas from sign linguists here in the list.  I
> am going to
> teach a course of sign linguistics in the next term (January-April,
> 2004;
> supervised by Prof. Gladys Tang), and I am still wondering what kind
> of things
> should be covered in the course and what textbook(s), papers, and/or
> reading
> materials I should use for the course.  The course is for our M.A.
> linguistics
> students, and most of them do not know anything about sign languages,
> sign
> linguistics, Deaf culture, and other related issues.
>
> I think that many of you are/have been teaching such courses, and I am
> very
> curious about what you are teaching.  Would you help me tell me (or
> us) what
> kinds of topic you cover, what textbooks/papers/reading materials you
> use for
> each topic, and so on?
>
> I think that your responses will be a great resource in teaching sign
> linguistics, and that they will benefit many of us, including me.
>
> I would greatly appreciate it if you kindly let me know the
> syllabus/syllabi of
> your course(s), by sending them to me directly or to the list.  Ones
> that are
> sent to me will be shared with you to the list, once I could get
> consent to
> disclose it to the list.
>
> Thank you very much in advance.
>
>
> Daisuke Sasaki
> Visiting Scholar, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
> Ph.D. candidate of linguistics, The University of Texas at Austin
>
>
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