En primer lugar, las perspectivas que tratan la sordera como deficiente sirve para contrastar la realidad de las lenguas de señas con la de las lenguas habladas. Al mismo tiempo, aprovechándose de una gama de fuentes de datos y métodos (por ejemplo, corpus de lenguas de señas, elicitación lingüística y etnografía lingüística), los investigadores han mostrado que los atributos y características únicas de las lenguas de señas nos permiten examinar todos estos temas desde otro punto de vista. Todos los temas clave de la sociolingüística, tales como el multilingüismo, el contacto lingüístico, la variación lingüística y las actitudes lingüísticas son de relevancia inmediata para las lenguas de señas.

La sociolingüística de las lenguas de señas existe en paralelo a la sociolingüística de las lenguas habladas, pero también la complementa.

Second, sign languages are used by both deaf and hearing people, in contexts where spoken/written languages, and increasingly also other sign languages are in use, leading to complex multimodal forms of sign–spoken, sign–written, and sign–sign language contact, and to hierarchical constellations of language attitudes and ideologies in relation to signed and spoken languages and variants. The linguistic status of sign languages has been long contested, and certain forms of signing are still labeled “nonlanguage.” The delineation and differentiation of sign languages, and of sign languages from other signing practices (e.g., gesturing, home sign) has therefore been a key issue. First, deficit perspectives on deafness serve to sharply distinguish the reality of sign languages from that of spoken languages. At the same time, sign language researchers using a range of data sources and methods (e.g., sign language corpora, linguistic elicitation, and linguistic ethnography) have showed that the unique natures and features of sign languages allow us to look at all these areas from a different vantage point. All of the key areas of sociolinguistics, such as multilingualism, language contact, variation, and language attitudes-are of immediate relevance to sign languages.

The sociolinguistics of sign languages parallels as well as complements the sociolinguistics of spoken languages.

Parallels access para que sirve