statistics on official recognition of SLs?

[Christopher Greene-Szmadzinski]

Additionally, here's a research study that explains the numbers behind
ASL users and why it is problematic to determine "rank" of language
use when it come to ASL especially in the United States:

http://research.gallaudet.edu/Publications/ASL_Users.pdf

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Barbara Gerner De Garcia
<barbara.gerner.de.garcia at gallaudet.edu> wrote:
> 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