Chapter 14
Bilingualism and deaf education
On Bali, there is a village with many deaf people. Most hearing villagers are bilingual. The deaf are not bilingual, and use only the local sign language. If more deaf children would attend the deaf school elsewhere on the island, what would change?
The implication in the question is that the school does not use the local sign language. If deaf children from the village attended this school, they would thus get in contact with the sign language of the country (Indonesian Sign Language); they would probably adapt to the school situation and bring back new signs to the village. This would lead to lexical change in the village sign language and possibly language shift.