ABSTRACT
The Deaf community or sign language using communities manifest superdiversity and translanguaging in ways that intersect with and yet differ from other accounts of superdiversity. In this chapter we explore the historical context of the use of sign language and the emergence of sign language communities from a minority language community context. We use the emergence of the American Deaf community as an example that is typical of many western Deaf communities. We also explore transnationalism with global deaf communities and the emergence of superdiversity in Deaf spaces both in situ and technologically enabled.
We then turn our gaze to the case of a Deaf lawyer whom we interviewed. Here we examine schooling and language strategies used by the Deaf lawyer to gain access to a legal education. We describe the types of linguistic devices used by the lawyer and those used by others that he draws our attention to.
