To Örebro University

The terms bilingualism and bilingual education (BE) have been recognized over time as being simplistic, if not miss-representative of the complex and diverse set of human behaviors that they index (Baker 2006, Garcia 2009, Grosjean 1982). A concern here relates to moving beyond dominating (colonially) framed mololingual, monoglossic understandings of bounded language systems, to recognize the fluidity inherent in languaging and translanguaging, including multimodalities that comprise the heteroglossic nature of human communication (Hasnain et al 2013, Blackledge & Creese 2014, García 2009, Linell 2009). In addition, different BE models like two-way bilingual programs, content and language-integrated programs, plurilingual/multilingual programs, segregated programs, etc, are ideologically framed sites of contestation and are not uncommonly connected to academic fields of expertise in either the Language Sciences or the Education Sciences. This means that the institutional activity system of BE is often seen as an extension of the theoretically framed domain in research called BE (Bagga-Gupta 2012).

Different Signed Languages (SLs) have also been, and continue to be, framed in simplistic/reductionist terms in both the popular imagination as well as in some dominating scientific domains. Different SLs have evolved and exist in different communities where large numbers of members are deaf (Groce 1985), in similar fashion as different oral languages have evolved in hearing communities. In other words, SLs are, at least since the 1960s, recognized within science, and since the 1990s in national policy contexts, as unique human languages, similar and just as complex in their make up as oral/articulated languages (OLs). Five types of cheremic unit variation in SLs, similar to phonological variation in OLs, are recognized: handshapes, sign location, palm orientation, movements and non-manual embodied features. While SLs are often denied recognition and continue to be contested in policy as well as in some scientific domains, they have existed in different formats in communities worldwide, and especially so within deaf education (DE) even in institutional settings where they have been formally forbidden.

This chapter aims to identify and account for the place and meaning of SLs in BE broadly and DE specifically. While I will give an account of the field, I will steer clear of the binary hegemonic ideologies that have continued to frame understandings related to SLs on the one hand, and BE, including DE on the other. Using brush strokes across the canvas (rather than specific areas on the canvas or individual colors or lines), my aim here is to trace salient developments and make visible the multiplicity of mainstream academic domains that contribute to and intersect in the field SLs in BE.