statistics on official recognition of SLs?

[Barbara Gerner De Garcia]

Yes, most certainly :)
Barbara

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 4:49 PM, Mark A. Mandel <mamandel at ldc.upenn.edu>wrote:

> May I have your permission to quote that paragraph, attributed to you, as
> a citation on the article's Discussion page for deleting that sentence?
> -- Mark
>
> On 12.01.31, at 2:30 PM, Barbara Gerner De Garcia wrote:
>
> *American Sign Language is the most used minority language yet almost the
> only minority language which lacks official government
> recognition.[citation needed]
> *
> I just taught a course on language rights Fall semester and this statement
> is totally inaccurate. First of all, ASL is* not* the most used
> "minority" language. According to the US Census publication *Language Use
> in the US 2007* (Shin & Kominsky, 2010), over 34 million residents age 5
> and over speak Spanish at home.  When we cite statistics for ASL "users" we
> tend to include hearing people who have learned ASL (high school and
> college students). If we add those groups to the number of people in the US
> who "use" Spanish, you can see that the number easily would exceed the
> number of those who "use" ASL.  Second, the phrase "official government
> recognition" is vague.  In the U.S., there is no official language, period.
> We do have protections in the U.S. against discrimination based on the
> language a person uses, but there are no "affirmative" or "positive"
> language rights that guarantee a person the right to use their language.
> The WFD has linguistic human rights for sign language users at the core of
> its positions, and the UNCRPD - UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with
> Disabilities also expresses sign language rights as the core issue for
> people who are Deaf and Deaf education.
>
> Barbara Gerner de Garcia
> p.s. Although I am guilty of often using Wikipedia, this statement helps
> illuminate why my university suggests that faculty include a statement on
> their syllabi that the use of Wikipedia is prohibited for student work
> (BTW, I do not have such a statement on any of my syllabi).
>
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 1:42 PM, Mark A.Mandel <mamandel at ldc.upenn.edu>wrote:
>
>> The Wikipedia article "Minority languages" includes the paragraph (
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_language#Controversy)
>>
>> ---
>> Signed languages are often not recognized as true natural languages even
>> though they are supported by extensive research. In the United States, for
>> example, American Sign Language is the most used minority language yet
>> almost the only minority language which lacks official government
>> recognition.[citation needed]
>> ---
>>
>> How accurate are these statements? Can the paragraph and the article be
>> improved with reliable and recent data?
>>
>>  --
>> Mark A. Mandel
>> Linguistic Data Consortium
>> University of Pennsylvania
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Barbara Gerner de Garcia, Professor and Chair
> Department of Educational Foundations and Research
> Gallaudet University
> 800 Florida Ave NE
> Washington, DC 20002-3695
>
> Phone: 202-651-5207
>
>
>


-- 
Dr. Barbara Gerner de Garcia, Professor and Chair
Department of Educational Foundations and Research
Gallaudet University
800 Florida Ave NE
Washington, DC 20002-3695

Phone: 202-651-5207
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/slling-l/attachments/20120131/e19b780f/attachment.htm>