Signs Across America: A Look at Regional Differences in American Sign Language

by Edgar H. Shroyer and Susan P. Shroyer

Book Overview

Signs Across America provides a fascinating and unique look at regional variations in American Sign Language. The authors contacted native signers in 25 states to find out their signs for 130 selected words. The results--more than 1,200 signs--are illustrated in this book. It is an invaluable reference for teachers of American Sign Language that explores the subtle differences in signs from different geographic areas.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0913580961
• ISBN13: 9780913580967
• Release Date: November 1984
• Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
• Length: 285 Pages
• Weight: 1.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.1" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

1984 signers!

It’s very very “vee veee” regional variations signs, vary drastically along all four parameters, yet many, many variations are still "acceptable" amongst fluent signers but it’s was print in 1984! Its was interesting seeing that.

Helps beginners understand signs can be "different" without being "wrong"

This book is an excellent teaching tool for Sign Language instructors to help amplify the point that there is variation in Sign Language just as there is in any other language. Beginning students latch onto the notion that their first instructor signed every sign in perfect "citation" form (or the first way they saw a sign formed in a book or on a video), but every pair of hands make a sign look slightly different. And regional variations make signs vary drastically along all four parameters, yet many, many variations are still "acceptable" amongst fluent signers. This rigid thinking of the beginner is not unique to Sign Language students; in Spanish 101, students are equally confused by a substitute teacher whose accent is from a different country of origin and whose word choices might be influenced by that variation in cultural background. It's so much easier to learn, in the beginning, if everything just stays the same. Unfortunately, language doesn't work that way, any language, Sign Language included. And "Signs Across America" provides instructors of Sign Language a fun way to show beginning students abundant examples of all the variations they might encounter, not to scare them away, but to prepare them for that possibility.