Usage
BSL has many regional dialects. Signs used in Scotland, for example, may not be used, and may not be understood immediately by those in Southern England, and vice versa. Some signs are even more local, occurring only in certain towns or cities (such as the Manchester system of number signs). Likewise, some may go in or out of fashion, or evolve over time, just as terms in oral languages do.
Many British television channels broadcast programmes with in-vision signing, using BSL, as well as specially made programmes aimed mainly at deaf people such as the BBC's See Hear and Channel 4's VEE-TV.
BBC News broadcasts in-vision signing at 07:00-07:45, 08:00-08:20 and 13:00-13:45 GMT/BST each weekday. BBC One also broadcasts in-vision signed repeats of the channel's primetime programmes between 00:30 and 04:00 each weekday.
BSL is used in some educational establishments, but is not always the policy for deaf children in some local authority areas. The Let's Sign BSL and fingerspelling graphics are being developed for use in education by deaf educators and tutors and include many of the regional signs referred to above...
Read more about this topic: British Sign Language
Famous quotes containing the word usage:
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—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1951)
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—Kenneth G. Wilson (b. 1923)
“I am using it [the word ‘perceive’] here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word.”
—A.J. (Alfred Jules)