What have sign languages taught us about human language development?

Sign language and how we use it and implement it into society has developed rapidly in the last 50 years, from little-to-no representation in education in the 1970s to the British Sign Language (BSL) Act 2022 and a new British Sign Language GCSE to be taught from 2025. In this 10-Minute Talk, Professor Bencie Woll FBA unpacks her research and involvement in understandings of language development, automatic translation between BSL and English, and recent political and education developments for BSL.

Speaker: Professor Bencie Woll FBA, Professor of Sign Language and Deaf Studies, University College London   

This podcast is for informative and educational purposes.  

For more information on BSL and research in Deafness Cognition, please visit: 

• BSL SignBank https://bslsignbank.ucl.ac.uk/   
• Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/research/deafness-cognition-and-language-research-centre-dcal   

10-Minute Talks are a series of pre-recorded talks from Fellows of the British Academy screened each Friday on YouTube and also available on Apple Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/10-minute-talks/id1530020476      

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