This article reports on a comparison of lexical items in the vocabulary of Icelandic and Danish sign languages prompted by anecdotal reports of similarity and historical records detailing close contact between the two communities. Drawing on previous studies, including Bickford (2005), McKee and Kennedy (1998, 2000a, 2000b) and Parkhurst and Parkhurst (2001), the authors elicited signs via a word list adapted from Swadesh (1955) and modified by Woodward (1978, 1991) for the purpose of researching sign languages. The signs for 292 lexical items were analyzed by comparing the parameters of hand con-figuration (together with hand/palm orientation), location, and movement and classified as identical, similar, or different. The results reveal a high percentage of similarity. A much higher degree of lexical similarity appears in the realization of country names than in any other semantic category. The study contributes to work in the field of Nordic sign languages and has methodological implications for the study of sign language vocabulary internationally. Limitations of the study are noted.

This study set out to investigate how teachers of English to deaf sign language users refer to metalanguage in the classroom, and more specifically, how these terms might be realised in British Sign Language (BSL). The study was structured in two phases. The first and longer phase of the study involved an initial round of interviews and a targeted elicitation task using a word list of 87 metalinguistic terms. How the participants expressed the terms in BSL was captured on video and analysed using ELAN, a multi-media annotation software designed for the creation of time-aligned text annotations to audio and video files. The elicited ways of expressing metalinguistic terms were subsequently re-created by two deaf presenters, unconnected to the study, for the purposes of sharing the data back to the participants to prepare for the second phase of the study that sought participants' reflections and observations. The data evidenced considerable linguistic variation and motivation in terms of how metalinguistic terms were articulated. Many variants evidenced strong visually motivated form-meaning mapping (iconicity and transparency), while some were more arbitrary in nature. Some variants demonstrated borrowing from English, through fingerspelling, loan translations and mouthing.Others provided evidence of semantic change (broadening) by using signs from other contexts, and some terms were realised using multiple signs that served as an explanation of the meaning.A considerable number of variants evidenced multiple features/motivations. The investigation was framed as practitioner research and as a collaborative enquiry. In addition to exploring the issue under investigation, the study simultaneously set out to establish a community of practice comprising of teachers of English to sign language users, willing to work together as a collaborative enquiry group to explore future research. CONTENTSLink to the video data for the thesis, recreated by the two deaf presenters: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B5OGA9Nd-WXNfmVqdHFwUWVJbTJrUlYzRkd2VWtqUGt3a3I5cWd0bGxhdkk4SGpVMHVTRGc?r esourcekey=0-4VAVmSkwBDePy8djkugyLw&usp=sharing List of tablesList of figures Impact statement Personal reflective statement The D/d distinction Other writing conventions in the thesis Chapter 1: Introduction and rationale 1.1 Professional context 1.2 IFS to thesis 1.3 Metalanguage and rationale for the study 1.4 Framing the study Chapter 2: Literature Review 2.1 Signed Languages 2.1.1 British Sign Language 2.1.2 Duality of patterning and the sub-lexical units of signs 2.1.3 Morphology and morphemes in BSL 2.1.4 Borrowing 2.1.5 Mouthing and other non-manual elements 2.1.6 Iconicity, transparency and arbitrariness 2.1.7 Semantic change, homonymy and polysemy 2.1.8 Lexical variation in sign languages 2.2 Research and Sign Language Studies 2.2.1 Collecting Data 2.2.2 Stimuli for eliciting data 2.2.3 Lexical investigations of semantic fields 2.2.4 Glossary Projects 2.3 Practitioner research and collaborative enquiry 2.3.1 Research, education and ...

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