Turkish Sign Language (T?D) is arguably one of the oldest sign languages studied so far. Compared to newer sign languages such as American Sign Language and British Sign Language, little is known about the historical, linguistic, and sociological issues regarding T?D. This paper discusses what is known about this language and what the current status of T?D is in the Turkish society. There is evidence that a sign language was present in the Ottoman society. It was used by not only the deaf people but also deaf and hearing servants working at the Ottoman palaces and courts where verbal communication was not allowed without permission. But there is no evidence yet to link that sign language to the present-day T?D. But there is evidence that T?D has its roots at the several schools for Deaf established in the cities such as Istanbul, Izmir, Merzifon, and Thessaloniki across the Ottoman State first established at the end of the 19th century under the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II. Some new schools for Deaf were established later during the Turkish Republic. Currently, the Deaf society in Turkey is very well organized under a deaf federation, associations, and clubs which regularly organize activities related to sports, arts, and education and participate in activities for Deaf across the globe. T?D was used at the schools for Deaf in the beginning, later it has been not recommended because of the British educational system of oralism since 1950s. But currently the ministry of education considers adding T?D courses to the curricula because of the recognition of T?D in the middle of 2000s by the Turkish Grand Assembly to accommodate the Human Rights for Disabled and Minorities recognized by EU during the ongoing negotiations to become an EU member. Scientific research on T?D has started in the early 2000s. Since then tens of scientific publications have been made including books and journal articles. Among them, there is the first T?D grammar book published recently in Turkish and in press in English. These works have shown that T?D is not historically related to any other sign language such as American, British, or French Sign Languages; T?D is not a signed version of Turkish; and, more importantly, T?D is a full-fledged natural language, which can be investigated from all domains of linguistics--from phonology to syntax.

There are divergent viewpoints within the Iranian Deaf community regarding the prioritization of available systems of communication: natural sign language (ZEI, or Iranian sign language), standard sign system, Farsi, and signed Farsi. Social factors, including education background, are important in this regard because identities are associated with signing styles. The process of language standardization also influences individual and group attitudes toward language varieties. In the case of ZEI, there has been a standardization process for almost four decades that has had a multifaceted impact on language attitudes in the deaf community. Standardization has taken place in two levels, lexicon and structure, which will be discussed in this paper. In the history of deaf education in Iran, there has always been great pressure to limit ZEI as a medium of instruction and formal communication and to replace it with either Farsi lip reading or manually coded Farsi or a combination of the two. The general avoidance or suppression of ZEI by educators and administrators has sent a message to deaf and hard-of-hearing students that Farsi is better than ZEI and Farsi in the written and oral forms opened the way for them to succeed in society. Thus, in the course of standardization, ZEI has taken on more Farsi structures. In this process, manual signs have been invented for all prepositions and conjunctions that do not exist in natural ZEI. Fewer facial markers are also considered more standard and thus more prestigious. On the lexicon level, selecting one sign out of all dialectal or regional signs, replacing less iconic signs with more iconic ones, replacing ZEI signs by ASL signs are among the policies adopted by the standardization trend over the past decades. As a result, two systems now exist in parallel, the one used in everyday communication, the other reserved for formal situations. I will examine how deaf and hard-of-hearing children and adults internalized the negative thinking about ZEI throughput decades and, even though their natural way of daily communication is via this language, they believe a signed Farsi system is the “correct” form of language, and how Deaf youth and linguists have recently begun challenging the notion of ZEI as “improper” language, and instead expanding and empowering the natural ZEI with all its variations.

In a 30 second video sponsored by the Family Education Services Foundation, an NGO that advocates for Deaf Community rights, Shahid Afridi, superstar Pakistani cricketer, signs: "Don't say it, sign it!” Pakistan Sign Language (PSL), including more than 5000 signs, reaches out to over 10,000 members of the Deaf community through celebrity promotions, DVDs, apps, and fun children’s stories. The story of PSL awareness in Pakistan was not so optimistic not too long ago. In this paper, I will look at the development of PSL, its grammatical nuances, and the cultural impact of teaching using PSL as the medium of instruction at Deaf non-profit schools in Pakistan. Close to 1.25 million children in Pakistan belong to the Deaf community. However, less than 2% of them attend school. After the establishment of Pakistan in 1947, Indo-Pakistan Sign Language (IPSL) or the urban Indian Sign Language register continued to represent Urdu, one of the northern Indian languages spoken. However, while Urdu became the national language of Pakistan, it represented only 7% of the population. The ideology of orality in the country, advocating spoken language as superior to sign language and forcing signers to mimic verbal language structure, further led to IPSL not representing the linguistic and cultural diversity of Pakistan. By the 1980s, the IPSL curriculum became outdated and went out of print. Not only did it remain limited for the needs of Deaf community members across diverse social contexts, but it could also not reconcile Pushto, Sindhi, Punjabi, and Balochi sign language varieties representing Pakistan’s four provinces. It is against this backdrop that I examine how PSL curriculum has been conceived by volunteer teachers, interpreters, and linguists with a focus on PSL semantics, in particular, iconic signs (where signs represent their meanings), compound signs (signs representing two signs), and initialized signs (when typically the finger-spelled first letter of a word is the handshape of a sign) and how PSL borrows from Urdu, BSL (British Sign Language), which was influential in the early stages of sign education in the country, and ASL (American Sign Language). I will conclude with reflections on how the new culture of PSL-based education at Deaf schools is transforming home cultures for hearing families of the Deaf community in Pakistan.

Researchers have compared the vocabularies of a range of the world's sign languages in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, leading to tentative family groupings based on lexical similarity (e.g. Woodward 1978, 1991, McKee & Kennedy 2000). However, little is known about the relationships amongst sign languages in Central Asia, where deaf education programs have short histories and signed language has only recently received scholarly attention. The geographically closest lexical comparisons are Woodward’s (1993) investigation of sign varieties in the south Asian subcontinent as far west as Karachi, Pakistan, and Al-Fityani & Padden’s (2008) and Hendriks’ (2008) comparisons of sign languages in the Arab world as far east as Jordan. In this paper, I explore the relationship of Afghan Sign Language (AFSL) to one foreign sign language with which deaf Afghans have had contact via education programs, namely, American Sign Language (ASL). Woodward (2011:48) suggests that new research on sign languages should begin with lexicostatistical studies. I use lexicostatistical methods to compare basic vocabulary items and present AFSL signs that are initialized with the ASL fingerspelling alphabet, instead of the fingerspelling alphabet used in AFSL. Results of the comparison show that 31.88% (44/138 items compared) of AFSL and ASL basic vocabulary are similar. I argue that this similarity percentage is the result of contact in the early 1990s in one influential education project among refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan. This paper takes a first step towards understanding the relationship of an understudied Central Asian sign language to a foreign sign language imported via deaf education. The level of similarity in basic vocabulary between these languages is unexpected given the short period since the introduction of ASL in Afghanistan. I suggest that these results are indicative of the influence of deaf educational institutions in the formation of signing communities and in the conventionalization of sign language.

Despite significant differences in Jordanian and American mainstream hearing culture, a qualitative, exploratory, single-case study of an Arabic/Jordanian Sign Language interpreter indicates there may be similarities in the processes of professionalization, identity building, and field induction (Annarino & Hall, 2013; Ball, 2013). Literature on signed language interpreting within developed, western countries such as the United States and Australia documents a common path of evolution, tracing the young profession of signed language interpreting from its roots in the Deaf community through efforts to standardize training and make it accessible, to its current state as a government mandated accommodation provided primarily by university educated, second-language learners (Ball, 2013; Napier, McKee, & Goswell, 2010; Napier, 2009). The current study’s findings suggest multiple ways in which Arabic/Jordanian Sign Language interpreting in Jordan is paralleling the course taken by American Sign Language (ASL)/English interpreting when developing as a profession in the United States. Despite a considerable Deaf population (Hendriks, 2008) and government support to include Deaf people in society (Higher Council for the Affairs of Persons with Disabilities, 2009; Rutherford, 2007), little education or training is currently available to Jordanian Sign Language interpreters, though there is evidence of improvement underway, and most interpreters enter the field because of language fluency gained through a Deaf family member rather than through formal training. This mirrors the early interpreting community in the United States, which primarily comprised hearing individual with Deaf parents (Ball, 2013). The participant is an adult woman with Deaf parents who is an experienced interpreter. Data regarding the participant’s experiences were gathered through questionnaire, interview, and notes taken during the interview. The data were analyzed through coding and triangulation across data sets, ultimately classified into three categories: Interpersonal Relations, Interpreting Paradigms, and Professional Standards. Each of these is examined and illustrated through the participant’s perspective. In light of the findings and research from Alkailani, Azzam, and Athamneh (2012) the author suggests that Jordanian cultural factors may contribute to the reported tension in collegial dynamics in the interpreting field within Jordan. The author contends that additional research on the topic should be conducted to determine if the experiences reported here are common to interpreters throughout Jordan and recommendations are made for future research directions relating to Arabic/ Jordanian Sign Language interpreting and the Deaf community within Jordan.