This book is obligatory for those interested in matters regarding the strengthening and protection of the rights of deaf communities and their languages all over the world. The book is a fitting tribute for those campaigners who have fought for the ‘legal recognition of sign languages’ as official languages in different countries. These movements have highlighted the serious social and political jeopardy suffered by those who have been denied having their languages recognized as such or have been deprived of the right of using them in different social scenarios. During the last few decades, the allies of such causes have been contributing to turning the supposedly mere ‘instrumental role’ status of sign languages into the more political, sociolinguistic, and anthropological role of official languages. The book brings a clear and current panorama of ‘advocacy campaigns’ for the creation of legislation that recognizes the linguistic status of sign languages ‘within their national contexts’, taking into account misconceptions, language ideologies, and policies for the language-acquisition rights of deaf minorities.
The first part of the book presents documentation on ‘recent’ legislative processes and their outcomes. The chapters thus discuss ‘strategies’ applied for the ‘pursuit of formal recognition’ of these languages in countries where the idea that ‘the small number of signers’, in comparison to the number of oral language users, is an argument still used for ‘limiting linguistic rights’. The whole context turns worse in countries where English is the official spoken language, since its worldwide prominent character only reinforces ideologies regarding ‘linguistic imperialism’, which is particularly highlighted in the recognition of sign languages as official ones. The recent effort toward the acceptance of these languages differ from country to country. However, these countries share experiences of different ‘concrete results’, depending on linguistic ideologies like the misleading idea of monolingualism.
The second part, ‘Implicit legal recognition’, is followed by the third part, ‘Ongoing campaigns towards explicit legal recognition’. These two sections define a broad representation concerning the actual statuses of sign language recognition legislation. The articles then revisit issues related to the implementation and nature of bills and laws that ultimately represent real ‘state legislations’ that reflect stronger public linguistic policies. These policies reveal a more committed perspective regarding the significant elimination of the barriers to societal participation of deaf people.
The fourth part particularly describes experiences of legislations that represent the sign language rights ideology better. Thus experiences of how this legislation affected the legal, medical, and educational settings, concerning the role played by the sign languages, are presented. Clearly, results show the implications of these laws for less vulnerable and more visible linguistic and cultural deaf communities.
In the epilogue the authors go back to important points developed throughout the book in an attempt to offer a broad view concerning the status quo of sign language recognition in the entire world. They offer a reasonable perspective of action for current and future advocacy campaigns for the recognition of sign languages throughout the world.
