Signed Language Rights, Attitudes Toward

Attitudes and ideologies toward languages, multilingualism, and linguistic variation and diversity are of relevance for all languages and all linguistic communities, but they are of greatest significance to linguistic minorities. The survival of a language and the well-being of its users usually heavily depend on attitudes. Attitudes influence ideologies, which in turn shape language policies and the linguistic rights awarded to minority members. Signed language minorities’ situations everywhere in the world depend on the amount of specific rights that have been awarded to them.

Rights

About a fourth of the world’s nation-states have awarded their national signed language(s) some official or legal status as a language. The rights of users of so-called recognized signed languages, however, differ greatly from country to country: Some Deaf communities indicate that ...

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