This paper explores International Sign, a sort of signed cross-linguistic communication, in the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) context. It gives prominence to and theorizes the irreducibly relational proportions of linguistic commensuration. It claims that communicating in IS depends upon and generates mutual moral orientation amidst signers, and that on the whole, it is the labor contained in employing IS that deaf people appraise and that the WFD General Assembly institutionalizes.