Deaf Language & Communication PDF

Unit 2: The Deaf and Language: Sign, Oral, Written What is sign language? Natural language exists in two modalities. So far we’ve mostly focused on spoken language: articulators: tongue, lips, teeth, etc. signal: linear, acoustic waveform perception: auditory system (ears) Today we will tal...

Unit 2: The Deaf and Language: Sign, Oral, Written What is sign language? Natural language exists in two modalities. So far we’ve mostly focused on spoken language: articulators: tongue, lips, teeth, etc. signal: linear, acoustic waveform perception: auditory system (ears) Today we will talk about sign language: articulators: two hands, face signal: multidimensional, visual signal perception: visual system (eyes) What is sign language?  Sign language, is any means of communication through bodily movements, especially of the hands and arms, used when spoken communication is impossible or not desirable. The practice is probably older than speech. It is a language that uses the conventional system of manual, facial, and other body movements to facilitate communication among deaf people or severely dysfunctional non-verbal people in the world. 1- Sign Language: A True Language without Speech  A Formal Criterion for a True Language Are those signs truly are part of a language or are just a collection of gestures that lack the sophistication of a language based on speech? Sign language is a true language because the language system allows a signer to comprehend and produce an unrestricted number of grammatical sign sentences  An Informal Criterion for a True Language Can we not agree that a signing person has a true language if that person can communicate by sign whatever can be communicated by speech? Language, of course, must depend on some physical mode for its acquisition and use but that mode need not be limited to sound. The mode can be visual, as in signing, or even touch as in languages used by the deaf-blind  Complete and Incomplete Sign Languages Research on sign languages seriously began for the most part in the 1960s when linguists and psycholinguists addressed themselves to this newly discovered area. The findings showed that signers of such sign languages as American Sign Language, French Sign Language, British Sign Language, and others can indeed communicate in sign whatever is expressed in speech (Stokoe, Casterline, & Croneberg, 1965; Klima & Bellugi, 1979). Other sign languages may be incomplete syntactically or limited in terms of vocabulary. Such incomplete sign languages are typically found in developing countries, although in even some developed nations, sign language may suffer from deficiencies. In Japan, for example, where the national government until recently prohibited the teaching and use of sign language in public schools, standardization and vocabulary are problems.  Speeds of Signing and Speaking Sentences are Comparable Returning to the language criterion, not only can a fluent signer of a complete sign language such as American Sign Language (ASL) sign whatever a speaker can say, but the signer communicates at about the same speed as a speaker does, The speed at which signers produce sentences (more precisely the ideas which underlie sentences) in a signed conversation tends to be the same as that at which speakers produce sentences in a spoken conversation (Bellugi & Fischer, 1972). https://youtu.be/Oequynk_0JY?si=sdDwhIFJXSulcVm0 2- Gestures of Hearing People Are Signs But Do Not Form a Language A: Gestures without Speech Once the role of such gestures is understood, they will not be confused with the signs of sign language. The reader must make this distinction. Although gestures may be complex, they are only collections of signs that are limited in scope and do not form a true language.  Gestures using arms, head, torso Hearing people use a variety of body movements to convey messages or to emphasize speech in daily life, Most of these movements, which we call gestures, mainly involve the face and hands. We use gestures to communicate a variety of types of messages, as, for example, in indicating: greetings: hello, goodbye - by moving the hands and arms; requests or commands: come, go, stop - by moving the hands.  Gestures are often similar but seldom universal. Coming upon another community's gestures may lead to confusion for an outsider. Most gestures are specific to cultural, linguistic, or geographic areas, To indicate 'self' (I /me), most Westerners point to their chest with their index finger. Chinese and Japanese, however, point to their nose with that finger.  Facial gestures Facial movements are used everywhere to convey a wide range of emotions and feelings. We do not actually need to utter a sentence like 'I am... (happy, surprised, disgusted, disappointed, excited, angry, etc.)' when we have in our non-verbal repertoire the amazing flexibility to smile, laugh, sneer, roll our eyes in exasperation, or contract our brow in consternation. B: Gestures with Speech Every speech community has its own distinctive gestures which are coordinated with speech. While alone these gestures do not indicate a meaning, with speech, they generally do serve some function. Beat and iconic gestures are two which we will discuss.  Beat The rhythm of gestures alongside the natural stress pattern of speech.  Metaphoric gestures Gestures that symbolize an abstract concept Ex: before and after, working together.  Iconic gestures Occur during continuous speech and show in their form a meaning related to the meaning articulated in speech. In most cases, the related speech unit is a word, called the ‘lexical affiliate’ of the gesture. Ex. A flat surface/car weaving through traffic  Deictic gestures Pointing to things, positioning yourself to people or places or things EX: behind me, over there  Emblems Named gestures that don’t have to occur alongside speech to have meaning. Ex: Thump up – it has a meaning outside context of speech. In many parts of the world, you can simply thump up to signal approval. Must be careful when using. Changing position or angel might have different meanings. 3- Speech-Based Sign Languages  Sign Languages use hand, face, or other body movements in a three-dimensional space as the physical means of communication. Principally, there are two types of sign language: One that relates to ordinary speech-based language and one that is independent of ordinary language. 1- Speech-based sign language represents spoken words (or their spelling) and the order of these words or morphemes as they appear in ordinary spoken languages, such as Swedish, English, and French. 2- Independent sign languages (ISLs), like American Sign Language and British Sign Language, which are not speech-based and not mutually intelligible. These sign languages are independent of the ordinary spoken language, having developed their own words and grammatical systems for the production and understanding of sentences. We shall call these Independent sign languages (ISLs). 1- Speech-based sign language Sign language based on the speech of ordinary language can be of two different kinds: one which represents the morphemes of speech and one which represents spelling (orthography). A: Finger Spelling: Letter by Letter According to this system, words are represented by spelling them out letter by letter in terms of individual signs, where each sign represents a letter of the alphabet, Hand and finger configurations are used to indicate letters, such as making a V with the index and middle fingers or an 0 with the thumb and index finger. Thus, a word such as 'enough' would be signed letter by letter, e, n, o, u, g, and h. Words and entire sentences can be communicated in this letter-by-letter method. There are both one-hand and two-hand cd systems of finger spelling (Figure 2.1). The Americans and Swedes, for example, use one hand, while the British use two. B: Morpheme by Morpheme (MnM) Sign Languages: 'Signing Essential English' and 'Seeing Exact English' Some deaf schools advocate a sign system that uses a whole sign for each speech word or meaningful part, i.e. a morpheme. Such systems are directly based on the spoken form of the speech-based language. Since these systems represent the morphemes of true speech- based languages, these systems therefore can be said to be true languages. The advantages of MnM systems:  LEARNER SIMULTANEOUSLY ACQUIRES THE MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX.  EASIER FOR AN ADULT HEARING PEOPLE TO LEARN. The advantages of MnM systems:  CHILDREN DO NOT LEARN MnM EASILY.  MnM IS NOT PREFERRED BY THE DEAF COMMUNITY. 2- Independent Sign Language (ISLs) such as American Sign Language (ASL) There are many ISLs around the world, ranging between 138- 300. A: Some Characteristics of ISLs: 1. Hand configuration: the shape that the hand forms 2. Place of articulation: where in space the hand is formed 3. Movement: how the hand moves. https://youtu.be/P_zTyhqSCaQ?si=s8I3xuLOE-ZxY0cP B. The Syntax of a Typical ISL: American Sign Language (ASL) - Individual words are structured together into sentences according to syntactic rules. - In ASL, the proper indexing or apportionment of space is crucial to producing grammatical sentences. - Violation of the rules which govern the relationship between signs will lead to confusion and ambiguous sentences C. Dialects and Foreign Accents in Sign Language - How signs tend to be made when learning a foreign ISL can be affected by the native language. - There is no universal sign language - A sign language is part of a culture. (Martha’s vineyard)  4- The Process of Learning ASL  A highly unusual feature of signing communities is that native users are relatively rare; 95 percent or more of deaf signers are first exposed to their language after infancy, and sometimes not until late childhood or even adult- hood. These demographics result from the fact that most deaf children are born into hearing families, and also from the fact that, until recently, hearing parents were often discouraged from learning sign language. Advocates of the Oral Approach (see next section) denounced sign language, arguing that it would reduce the effectiveness of speech training. 5- The Oral Approach and Total Communication A. Oral Approach Succesful with the Less Hearing-Impaired B. Oral Approach Fails with the Severely Hearing-Impaired C. Speechreading is Not Easy D. A Sensible Approach: Total Communication A- Oral Approach Succesful with the Less Hearing- Impaired  The Oral Approach focuses on the teaching of speech production. Its secondary focus is on speech comprehension. Be that as it may, in this approach, children from the age of 2 or 3 years onwards are specially trained in the skill of articulating speech sounds, Also, it is not uncommon nowadays to have some computerized equipment that displays sounds and assists in the teaching.  B- Oral Approach Fails with the Severely Hearing- Impaired  As was just noted, a great problem with the Oral Approach is that it tends only to work for a portion of the hearing-impaired population. Research shows, unsurprisingly, that the less people can hear, the less they will be able to produce and comprehend speech. Thus, relatively few children who are born with severe or profound hearing loss (over 75 or 80 decibels in their better ear) acquire any significant degree of speech.  There is a good reason that severely hearing-impaired persons do poorly in producing speech. Simply put, to produce speech sounds, one first must hear the sounds that someone else is making. One must have a target. Without having heard the target sounds, one would have no basis for comparative judgment.  C- Speechreading is Not Easy  The comprehension of speech is usually fostered through both exploiting any residual hearing that learners may have and the teaching of speechreading, commonly known as ‘Lip-reading'. With speechreading, an adept person can interpret about half of what is said, which, given the great amount of redundancy in ordinary speech, is enough to guess most of the content. The better the deaf person is in hearing, the better that person will be in both speaking and speechreading. D- A Sensible Approach: Total Communication  Because of the large number of failing cases as a result of the application of the Oral Approach, many hearing-impaired persons were not only unable to communicate with the hearing community but were unable to communicate adequately with their hearing-impaired friends and colleagues. It was this tragic situation, one that continues in many places today, that convinced many educators of the deaf that educational programs should include sign language in their curriculum along with speech training, 6- The Sign Language vs Oral Approach Controversy A. Rationale of Oral Advocates in Excluding Sign Language B. One Formidable Advocate of the Oral Approach: Alexander Graham Bell C. Bell versus Edward Gallaudet Rationale of Oral Advocates in Excluding Sign Language  While Oral Approach advocates, such as Daniel Ling and the Ewings (Ewing & Ewing, 1964), may even admit that sign language is a language, they argue not only that the learning and use of sign language negatively affect the acquisition of speech but that without speech production there will be defective thinking. These contentions have no basis in empirical observation or psycholinguistic theory and are false. If anything, knowledge of ASL and reading facilitates the acquisition of speech One Formidable Advocate of the Oral Approach: Alexander Graham Bell  There was a time when sign language was thought to do more harm than good. It was banned for decades.  One of the most well-known advocates of the Oral Approach  Bell presented the view that only speech should be taught to the deaf regardless of their degree of hearing loss. (Oralisim) teaching deaf kids to speak.  Bell impressed both sign language and oral approach advocates. It was reported that not only was Bell successful in getting the pupils to articulate sounds but that by the end of two months, Bell himself was communicating with his pupils using his newly acquired sign language. Why Bell favoured the Oral Approach? Bell's favoring of the oral method was based on several reasons, the chief of these being how the public reacted to those who could not speak. The public regarded mutes as being intellectually inferior. He wanted the deaf to be able to speak so that they would be accepted as equals into society. Bell undoubtedly had his own deaf mother in mind. Later, when he himself married a deaf woman, his position in this respect was reinforced even more. Bell versus Edward Gallaudet  Bell's anti-sign position was pitted against the leader of the pro-sign group in America, This person was the head of the Gallaudet American Asylum and was none other than the son of Thomas Gallaudet, Edward M. Gallaudet.  They share similar backgrounds – deaf mothers, and hearing fathers.  Bell wanted deaf people to speak so that they would not have to marry among themselves and thus produce deaf offspring. If the deaf were able to speak, he believed that they would have a better chance of landing hearing mates, Whether this is reasonable or discriminatory depends on one's interpretation. In 1960s, a linguist called Welliam Stokoe proved that ASL shares the essential characteristics of spoken language, and ASL was finally declared a true language. Along with it came the very first sign language dictionary. 7- The Written Language Bilingual Approach for Complete Communication How the Deaf (an Communicate with the Hearing and Succeed in the Workplace  The need for literacy The problem that remains is how deaf people are to communicate with members of the dominant hearing community is a different problem. Barring the very unlikely event that hearing people will learn ISL on a mass scale, the burden falls on the deaf to acquire some means of communication for use with hearing persons. In this regard two main approaches are available. One is speech (through the Oral Approach), which, as we know, benefits only those who have moderate hearing loss. The other, little known, is the Written Bilingual Language Approach.  Low level of literacy leads to low-level jobs Although Total Communication has improved the lot of the deaf in a significant way by providing sign language, in addition to speech training, one great educational problem remains, that of literacy. On average, hearing-impaired persons, even after a Total communication education programme, still graduate from high school with a reading level equivalent only to that of a hearing child in Grades 4 or 5 of elementary school.  Written communication by notes In the absence of deaf persons having a recognizable speech ability, and in the absence of hearing persons having a sign ability, deaf persons can use written notes for personal communication.  Why the teaching of reading/written language has failed? Typically the teaching of reading has not been successful for the deaf. Teachers wait until a substantial knowledge of speech or sign has been acquired before they begin to teach reading (actually, written language). By this time the child is well into elementary school and reading is then taught through sign or speech. The Written Language Approach  The essential idea of this approach is that the meaningful written forms of an ordinary speech-based language, such as English or Spanish, with its words, phrases, and sentences, are to be learned initially through direct association with objects, events, and situations in the environment, Even if written language is learned with the aid of sign, the final knowledge product is a separate language.  Thus, just as hearing children learn a language, initially by associating the speech sounds that they hear with environmental experiences, hearing-impaired children can similarly learn the language, but through an association of written forms with those environmental experiences. Advantages of the Learning of Written Language  The learning medium is appropriate. Perception of written stimuli depends on vision, a medium in which the normal hearing-impaired are fully capable. Language can be acquired without any special obstacle based on the visual medium.  No new knowledge needs to be acquired by instructors Because the instructors already know how to read, they already know written language. Parents and teachers of the hearing-impaired do not have to learn the written language to teach it. They only have to learn the best methods and techniques to be a good instructor.  Instruction can begin in infancy. Parents of hearing-impaired children can teach their children written language at home during the children's most formative years. Children as young as 3 months of age can be exposed to written language in a natural way in the supportive comfort of their own home.  All hearing-impaired children can benefit. No effort devoted to teaching written language will be wasted. All children can benefit from it since whatever is learned improves their level of literacy.  Written language acquisition can facilitate speech. By learning written language, the syntax and vocabulary that underlie speech are also learned. Acquisition of written language therefore can accelerate oral instruction.  Written language teaching is compatible with other approaches. Written language can be taught in conjunction with either sign language or the oral method, without any injury to the integrity of those approaches.