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We examine two variations in the Irish Sign Language of Dublin, Ireland. Signers commonly refer to these sign varieties as “female” and “male” signs. Because of the historical link of these signs to school signs, the signers in this study were selected on the basis of age, sex, and social network. The sex of the signer seems to explain differences observed in the distributions of signers’ knowledge and use of the “female” and “male” sign varieties. We argue that the differences between women’s knowledge and use of “male” signs, and men’s knowledge and use of “female” signs result from differences in cultural opportunities to acquire full facility with both varieties.

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In Dublin, Ireland, the gendering of Irish Sign Language (ISL) is extreme among women born before 1931 and men born before 1946. These groups are products of two gendersegregated residential schools for the deaf. The language differences emerging from the schools were sufficiently divergent to obscure communication by gender. Yet, as adults, rather than embrace their gendered language differences, most women and men sought ways to eradicate them. Essentially the eradication process nearly eliminated the female form of signing in favor of the male form. Most people in this gendered linguistic generation have followed this cultural convention, but not everyone. This article considers individual and community language practices that challenge, and in some cases subvert, existing cultural norms of gendered linguistic behavior leading both to language contraction and to more recent attempts to revitalize the female form of ISL.

Conflict is commonplace in teacher‐centered preschool classroom activities. It is negotiated both verbally and nonverbally, often fading rather than resolving in the interactive moment. The teacher or aide steps in to define what is right and wrong, thus acting to mediate conflict and taking up the position of moral authority. When she does not step in, children may invoke her authority in this regard. Children have a variety of responses to teachers' judgments. When children disagree with teacher/aide's assessments of the conflict, they tend to continue the conflict nonverbally until their attention is diverted and they are reabsorbed into classroom activities. They may also directly refute the authority as long as they use humor to suspend classroom rules. Ultimately in this study of preschool children's conflict, the highly structured teacher‐directed preschool context directs notions of “right” and “wrong,” of morality, as a core function of classroom conflict talk for American preschool children. [preschool, disputes, classroom, authority, conflict]