Desa Kolok – literally “deaf village” – in the north of Bali has a community with a unique sociolinguistic setting. The presence of genetic deafness over many generations has given rise to an indigenous sign language and socio-cultural adaptations to deafness.

The village community in Desa Kolok has adapted to the presence of deafness to an extent not known in any other community. Deaf members of the village have special social roles such as waterpipe management, burials, and policing of the village, and there are specific cultural and social practices referring to deafness, including a deaf god in the local variety of Hinduism and myths about the origin of deafness in the village.

The author also documents the linguistic structures of the village sign language Kata Kolok (“deaf language”) in detail. Kata Kolok differs from most other known sign languages with respect to the use of the sign space in its linguistic system: the sign space is not used metaphorically to refer to non-spatial concepts such as time, transitivity, or logical contrasts. Thus there is no metaphorical “time line” with the future in front and the past at the back of the signer, and transitive verbs do not have a movement from subject to object location. The author also provides a detailed account of the patterns of language use for both signed and spoken languages in this multilingual village.

In summary, this book paints a compelling, vivid picture of the village community, the patterns of language use, the cultural significance of deafness, and the structure of the sign language. The book includes a data CD with video clips of the village and the sign language as well as colour photographs showing daily life in the village. The book will be of interest to sign language linguists, typologists, linguistic anthropologists, sociolinguists, and specialists in language documentation and field linguistics.

This book is published by Ishara Press, an ethically responsible publisher in the field of sign language studies.