16/03/2026 Marah Jaraisi & Marcus Perlman (University of Birmingham)

Israel is known for its extraordinary sign language diversity, especially in Palestinian Arab towns and villages. In addition to the national Israeli Sign Language, studies have, to date, identified five independent sign languages that appear to have emerged locally within the last century: Kufr Qassem Sign Language, Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language, Arab-Al-Naim Sign Language, Ein Mahel Sign Language, Abu Kaf Sign Language (e.g., Jaraisy & Stamp, 2022; Kastner et al., 2014; Lanesman & Meir, 2012; Sandler, n.d.; Sandler et al., 2014). This landscape has presented a unique opportunity for the study of language evolution and the factors that drive the emergence of new languages.

An important question is why so many sign languages have developed within such a relatively small region. Previous studies have mostly considered internal factors relating to these communities’ social structure and norms (e.g., consanguineous marriage, recessive genes for deafness), and to external factors such as the desert geography of the region, but the role of the region’s political history has been largely neglected.  

In this study, we examine the role of ethnic segregation imposed by the Israeli state on Palestinian Arabs citizens of Israel in the mid-20th century as an important factor in driving the sign language diversity in Israel. Crucial to our argument, Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel were not permitted freedom of movement, while Jewish citizens were granted this right. As a result, sign languages of Palestinian deaf communities were more likely to emerge independently and persist in isolation, while the sign languages of Jewish citizens merged into one national sign language. We discuss the implications of this political history on understanding the conditions in which new languages emerge and persist. We suggest that the physical isolation and ethnic segregation of communities enforced by governments leads to the absence of language contact, and therefore the isolation and preservation of languages. We conclude that the degree of language diversity mirrors the degree of fragmentation of a population.   

References: 

Jaraisy, M., & Stamp, R. (2022). The Vulnerablity of Emerging Sign Languages: (E)merging sign lanuages? Languages. 

Kastner, I., Meir, I., Sandler, W., & Dachkovsky, S. (2014). The emergence of embedded structure: Insights from Kafr Qasem Sign Language. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00525 

Lanesman, S., & Meir, I. (2012). The survival of Algerian Jewish Sign Language alongside Israeli Sign Language in Israel. Sign Languages in Village Communities: Anthropological and Linguistic Insights, 4, 153. 

Sandler, W., Aronoff, M., Padden, C., Meir, I., Enfield, N., Kockelman, P., & Sidnell, J. (2014). Language Emergence: Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language. In The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 246–278). https://signlab.haifa.ac.il/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/LANGUAGE_EMERGENCE_PUBLISHED.pdf 

Sign Languages of Israel. (n.d.). https://gramby.haifa.ac.il/images/pictures/village_sign_map3.png