The Deaf Awakening in France

I did not become deeply committed to the cause of bilingualism by pure chance : my commitment stemmed from my own observations and thoughts on the communication situations that I had experienced throughout my personal and professional life. Before describing the birth of the bilingual education movement, this book recalls the gradual rise of the interest in sign language that then developed into the struggle for bilingualism, starting in the nineteen seventies and right up to the present day. This growing interest and the many different initiatives and actions that it prompted through the French bilingual movement in the final decades of the 20th century, finally led to the official recognition of French Sign Language in 2005.