The Preface of Volume 2, written by the primary author (John D. Bonvillian), offers an overview of many of the various themes and topics covered in Volume 1. This overview is accomplished through the historical lens of Dr. Bonvillian’s life, educational training, and decades-long career, with a view of the corresponding changes in the attitudes of linguists and the public toward signing and Deaf people as various advances in sign language research were made. Highlighted are the similarities and differences between spoken languages and signed languages, the history of sign use in the education of deaf students, and the introduction of signing into communication intervention programs with non-speaking or minimally verbal children with autism, an intellectual disability, cerebral palsy, or aphasia. Bonvillian points out the variable outcomes of teaching signs to such individuals before addressing possible reasons for this disparity: delaying the introduction of signs (often because of parental fears that signing would inhibit the development of speech skills), the lack of a supportive signing environment, and the characteristics of the signs themselves. He stresses the characteristics of signs that tend to be more easily learned, remembered, and produced by non-speaking individuals: highly iconic signs, signs with a single movement, signs with basic or easily formed handshapes, signs that make contact with the person’s body or non-dominant hand or arm, and signs that are highly relevant to that individual’s life. Also mentioned are the emotional and intellectual benefits of learning to sign, the ways signing can support speech, and how signing may be used to teach words from a person’s native language or to acquire a foreign or additional spoken language.
