Introduction
On 27 June 1999, 4,000 people marched through London in support of British Sign Language (BSL), demanding its recognition as the language of the British Deaf community and asserting the right of Deaf children to be educated in a bilingual environment with BSL as the language of instruction ( Deaf History Journal, 1999). While the British Deaf were marching, the Parliament of Thailand was in the process of formally recognizing Thai Sign Language as a fully fledged language, as the first language of Thai deaf people, and as the language through which Thai deaf people should be educated in a bilingual environment. By late March 2005, the British Deaf community were celebrating the fact that the government had recognized the existence of BSL Footnote 1but were fervent about the need to continue agitating to have BSL legalized so that BSL users have the legal right to use it, “bringing years of language discrimination to an end,” indeed for BSL to be recognized as “the UK's...
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Notes
- 1.
BSL was recognized as an official British language by the UK government on 18 March 2003, but it does not have any legal protection.
- 2.
“SIGNMatters” is a newsletter of the British Deaf Association.
- 3.
See WFD web site ( http://www.wfdeaf.org/) for their response and for other documents relating to sign languages.
- 4.
See in particular the chapters by May ( 2006) on the impact of nationalism on minority rights; by Skutnabb‐Kangas ( 2006) on language policies and linguistic human rights; by Reagan ( 2006) on language planning and sign languages; and by Phillipson ( 2006) on language policy and linguistic imperialism.
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Branson, J., Miller, D. (2008). National Sign Languages and Language Policies. In: Hornberger, N.H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_12
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