Sign Language Research Sixty Years Later: Current and Future Perspectives

In 1960, Stokoe published the first linguistic description of sign language structure. Sixty years later, sign languages are being investigated in many different countries and from many different perspectives. On one hand, formalist approaches analyze sign languages and their similarities with spoken languages. On the other hand, other approaches have developed out of the recognition of the distinctive features of sign languages. At the same time, deaf studies has provided many insights into deaf communities as oppressed cultural and linguistic minorities. In addition, gesture studies have contributed to a much wider understanding of co-speech gestures and of the relationship between gestures and signs. It has been shown that action, gestures, and signs are strongly interconnected in language use and development. In more recent times, sign languages have also started to be investigated from neuroscientific perspective, with researchers involved in identifying the neural substrates of sign language use. The field of sign language research is ever changing and growing.

Today, the debates in sign language research are intense and very lively. Old and new questions are open and need to be tackled: issues dating back to, for example, Stokoe’s work on semantic phonology are still current and need to be addressed or revised. At the same time, new research questions on, for example, the pragmatic dimension of sign language use or the identification of the neural mechanisms underpinning sign language processing are currently open. The goal of this Research Topic is two-fold: we wish to contribute to the advancement of the various subfields of sign language research by providing a state of the art of the current lines of investigation. By doing so, we aim at enlightening the role that sign languages can play both in the understanding of human language and in the comprehension of the relationship between language and cognition. We intend to bring together researchers from different perspectives and disciplines to tackle old and recent issues on sign language research, including on sign language grammar, the status of iconicity, the neural substrates of sign language production and comprehension, the pragmatic dimension in sign languages, the gesture versus sign distinction, or sign language in typical cognitive ageing, minor and major neurocognitive disorders and other neurodegenerative conditions.

We encourage manuscript submissions that address various fields of sign language research from a theoretical and/or from an experimental point of view. We aim to cover a wide range of research including, but not limited to, the following topics:

● cognitive/functional and usage-based linguistics
● formalist approaches
● phonetics, phonology, lexicon, grammar, semantics, pragmatics, discourse
● gesture studies and sign languages
● typology
● first or second language acquisition
● language evolution
● language variation and change
● theorization of iconicity
● metaphor and metonymy and other forms of figurative language
● sociolinguistics
● neurolinguistics
● sign language in typical cognitive ageing, minor and major neurocognitive disorders and other neurodegenerative conditions
● psycholinguistics
● anthropology, ethnography, and history
● philosophy of language.

We welcome contributions from the epistemology of sign language research, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, ethnography, social sciences, translation and interpreting, linguistic rights, psycholinguistics, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, neuropsychology. Original Research articles, Brief Research Report, Case Report, Empirical Study articles are welcome as well as Conceptual Analysis, Perspective, Hypothesis & Theory, Review, Systematic Review, General Commentary and Opinion articles.