Integrating Sign Languages into the Linguistics Curriculum

The goal of this project is to begin to integrate sign languages into the core UBC Linguistics curriculum, diversifying the languages students are exposed to and helping promote intercultural understanding and inclusion. We envision UBC as having a fully functional sign language component of our general curriculum within a few years, and this project represents an early step toward that goal.

This TLEF has three objectives:

1. The development of general resources about sign languages and Deaf culture to educate students about relevant social issues;
2. The continued development of software tools to facilitate the transcription, collection, and linguistic analysis of sign languages, which will themselves directly enhance student learning and research and also allow for #3:
3. The development of hands-on activities to be incorporated into the general flexible learning structure of our program to help students fully understand the differences and similarities between signed and spoken languages.