Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Sonoma State University/ANTH386 Sign Languages and Signing Communities (Spring 2025)
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- Course name
- ANTH386 Sign Languages and Signing Communities
- Institution
- Sonoma State University
- Instructor
- RJSanth
- Wikipedia Expert
- Brianda (Wiki Ed)
- Subject
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Course dates
- 2025-01-22 00:00:00 UTC – 2025-05-30 23:59:59 UTC
- Approximate number of student editors
- 20
This course focuses on sign languages throughout the world, and the anthropological study of their linguistic communities. Special emphasis is given to several themes: (a) language as a system, (b) language in cultural and social context, and (c) language relationships in space and time.
Natural sign languages are used around the globe by people who are deaf, as well as by people in shared speech communities with them. In this course, we shall examine language use and language issues associated with communities of signers. We will NOT be studying deafness as a pathology, but rather, we shall take a sociocultural/biocultural and linguistic approach that highlights Deaf communities as linguistic, speech, and identity communities. Ideologies and practices that involve sign language reveal processes that are present in spoken language communities, too, —processes that are often overlooked due to the ‘invisibleness’ of unconscious daily practices of communication.
This course will use the data provided by particular cases to support an ongoing discussion of anthropological theory, with a linguistic focus. These cases are drawn from situations in the US and abroad, with extended attention given to Nicaraguan Sign Language, the instructor’s area of research.
Students will identify a d/Deaf scholar or a sign language case in an existing Wikipedia article, or that warrants attention as a new Wikipedia article, and will develop and edit the article drawing on verified sources, especially published, peer-reviewed sources.