Religious Signing : A Comprehensive Guide For All Faiths

Rating:
Summary: Religous Signing
Review: This is an excellent book. The only one of its kind. I only wish being this is the year 2001 that we had more books like this along with CD's. If anyone knows of where I can purchase a CD with religous signing, please let me know.

Rating:
Summary: Out of date signs
Review: This is good to use for hearing audiences who do not know sign: the signs are often erroneous or out of date and so are frustrating to use in conversation with the Deaf.
This would work well for interpretation of praise music for hearing congregations.

Rating:
Summary: Out of date signs
Review: This text, like others from Elaine Costello, is comprehensive concerning religious signs. I did not say exhaustive. There is no such thing. The geographic and cultural variations are too great to fully document in one text. Contrary to another reviewer, there are not wrong signs in this book. The reviewer mistook geographic variation with which she was not familiar for mistakes. But Elaine Costello isn't going to offer wrong signs! She's an expert and it's just not going to happen. This text, along with the medical sign dictionary, should be used with the American Sign Language dictionary she published in the early 90's, which is also comprehensive. There are many other sign books out there, and many have come to think that "The Joy of Signing" is about the best. But it's far from it. It's good, but it doesn't actually present American Sign Language; rather, it presents Signed English. One is better off just grouping together Costello's comprehensive resources for referencing signs and then buying ASL grammar books to supplement. If, on the other hand, one wants to learn Signed English--which is not accepted in the Deaf community--then buy all the sign dictionaries you want and skip the grammar books.

Costello has set the standard for sign language dictionaries and there's really no need for others to produce their own competitive versions. Costello should just continue to expand her current works and also produce other specialized dictionaries as she did with the religious and medical field. The next one she should produce is a legal dictionary. Others should consider writing books which better explain the grammar of the language of the Deaf community. Those who use Signed English aren't speaking another language; they're speaking coded English, just like writing and morse code and fingerspelling is just coded English. The Hearing community needs to learn to speak ASL, not coded English; and Costello, not Reikohoff, leads much more in this direction.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Resource
Review: This text, like others from Elaine Costello, is comprehensive concerning religious signs. I did not say exhaustive. There is no such thing. The geographic and cultural variations are too great to fully document in one text. Contrary to another reviewer, there are not wrong signs in this book. The reviewer mistook geographic variation with which she was not familiar for mistakes. But Elaine Costello isn't going to offer wrong signs! She's an expert and it's just not going to happen. This text, along with the medical sign dictionary, should be used with the American Sign Language dictionary she published in the early 90's, which is also comprehensive. There are many other sign books out there, and many have come to think that "The Joy of Signing" is about the best. But it's far from it. It's good, but it doesn't actually present American Sign Language; rather, it presents Signed English. One is better off just grouping together Costello's comprehensive resources for referencing signs and then buying ASL grammar books to supplement. If, on the other hand, one wants to learn Signed English--which is not accepted in the Deaf community--then buy all the sign dictionaries you want and skip the grammar books.

Costello has set the standard for sign language dictionaries and there's really no need for others to produce their own competitive versions. Costello should just continue to expand her current works and also produce other specialized dictionaries as she did with the religious and medical field. The next one she should produce is a legal dictionary. Others should consider writing books which better explain the grammar of the language of the Deaf community. Those who use Signed English aren't speaking another language; they're speaking coded English, just like writing and morse code and fingerspelling is just coded English. The Hearing community needs to learn to speak ASL, not coded English; and Costello, not Reikohoff, leads much more in this direction.