9310116 LUCAS ABSTRACT Based on a large videotaped corpus representative of the American Deaf community, this study of sociolinguistic variation in American Sign Language (ASL) will investigate two theoretical questions: 1) Can the internal linguistic restraints on variation such as those identified and described in spoken language studies be identified and described for variation in ASL; 2) Similarly, can external social constraints be identified and described and what kind of model best accounts for the external constraints? Specifically, is a traditional stratification model most appropriate or can a social network analysis be used to account for individual variability, and are there factors relevant to the determination of the network score that may be unique to the American Deaf community? Videotaped data will be collected in eight representative geographical regions, in group sessions and in individual interviews. Informants will include White and African_American native or near-native user of ASL in three age groups controlled for socioeconomic status. The data will be examined for phonological, lexical, and morphosyntactic variables, and the internal and external constraints on these variables will be described, using the Varbrul program. Social network scores will be calculated for selected informants and correlated for their linguistic behavior. The study has both theoretical and practical importance: it will contribute to our understanding of ASL as a human language at a time when the instruction of ASL is rapidly expanding both for hearing adults and children and for deaf children. ***
