PINKY EXTENSION AND EYE GAZE: LANGUAGE USE IN DEAF COMMUNITIES.Ceil Lucas (Ed.). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1998. Pp. ix + 285. $55.00 cloth.

Abstract

This collection of ten articles constitutes the fourth volume of a series, Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities. The book's title refers to an aspect of variation in sign languages (pinky extension) and an aspect of sign language discourse (eye gaze) and underscores the richness and uniqueness of language use in Deaf communities around the world. The ten articles are distributed among the book's six sections: variation, languages in contact, language in education, discourse analysis, second language learning, and language attitudes., Although most of the articles focus on American Sign Language (ASL), one article explores grammatical constraints on fingerspelled English verb loans in British Sign Language, another examines the representation of character signs in Taiwan Sign Language (TSL) resulting from contact between TSL and written Chinese, and a third outlines historical, political, and educational issues affecting Irish Sign Language and the Irish Deaf community. The book's coverage of diverse sign language communities is enhanced by an article exploring variation in the use of “tactile ASL” by Deaf-Blind people, in which case a language ordinarily processed in a visual modality is communicated through touch.