1. SOUNDLESS LANGUAGES?
2. LANGUAGE WITHOUT SPEECH
3. GESTURES AND SIGNS
4. SIGN LANGUAGE
5. THE SIGN LANGUAGE STRUGGLE IN DEAF EDUCATION
6. THE ORAL AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE APPROACHES
1. SOUNDLESS LANGUAGES?
A soundless language. Language without speech? If you are just considering this idea for the first time, it really might really strike you as odd. It is hard to imagine language existing without speech; language and speech seem so intertwined that one presumes the other.
Yet, by now most of us have had the opportunity to experience sign language, if only to see it used in a corner of our TV screens. There we can see a person in a little portion of the screen translating speech into sign for the benefit of deaf and less hearing-impaired viewers. You may wonder though, and quite justifiably, whether 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. Sometimes too we see captions in writing for deaf viewers. Could not the writing system also be used as a language for the deaf, independent of speech? This would certainly be different from reading, as we ordinarily think of reading.
It is questions such as these that we shall consider in this chapter. Such a consideration will not only provide a better idea of what language is, but it will introduce us to a fascinating variety of soundless languages, and how such languages are used by hearing-impaired persons.
All of this will then lead us quite naturally to our looking at
some of the heated debates currently raging regarding language education
for the deaf. The issues involved are worth our attention not only
because of their inherent psycholinguistic interest but because of their
practical importance to a sizable group of human beings, the deaf,
people whose hearing ability is so severely or profoundly impaired that
even with the assistance of hearing aids, they are unable to adequately
perceive speech sounds. The entire lives of the deaf are directly affected
by the educational perspectives which emerge from such debates. Furthermore
a consideration of the problems of the deaf will illustrate once again
how necessary it is to have good theory in order to deal meaningfully with
practical language problems. Conversely, too, practical problems involving
unusual but naturally occurring phenomena demand a sharpening of our thinking
so that we can explain and understand their occurrence; such a stimulus
will serve to improve our general theoretical conceptions of the nature
of language and its acquisition.
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How can we judge whether persons who use “sign language” truly have language? While we might now attempt to present a lengthy treatise on the nature of language and then use that as a criterion, not only might you lose interest, but we might fail and you might not be convinced as to the adequacy of the criterion.
In its stead, we would like to offer something simpler. Can we not say that a person who can communicate by signing whatever can be communicated by speech has a language ? This seems reasonable because we can agree that people who communicate in speech have language. Of course, for this criterion we must allow for a difference in the physical means of communication, signing rather than speech. This is not a critical concession, for, just as we regard the physical acts of producing and hearing speech as being different in some way from (or a part of) language, so, too, can we regard the producing and seeing of signs as being different from (or a part of) language. This should not be taken as implying that language can exist independently of any physical mode of experession, for this would be absurd. Language does depend on some physical mode for acquisition and use, but the point being made here is that the mode need not be limited to sound. Even touch can be used as a mode, as it is for persons who are both deaf and blind. (The case of Helen Keller comes to mind in this regard.)
One exception would have to be made though for the proposed criterion but it is a minor one. This relates to the sounds of nature, which are imitated to some degree in speech. With our voices, we can approximate the sounds made by the croaking of a frog, the buzzing of a bee and the rush of the wind, even though these (onomatopoeic) sounds may vary from language to language (“bow-wow” or “woof-woof” in English as opposed to “wan-wan” in Japanese).
Obviously such sounds (however remote they may be from the true sounds in nature) could not be made in the visual sign mode. However, given that such sounds play a relatively small role in general communication, their absence in sign can be reasonably overlooked. We are, are we not, much more interested in whether a communication like ‘Do you think that if it hadn’t rained yesterday and Mary’s uncle had given her the money he had promised her, then she might have decided to go shopping for a new stereo?’ could be conveyed through signing? For, such a communication expresses a variety of complex semantic functions and relations (Question, Conditional, Time, etc.) involving a number of events and situations, none of which had actually occurred (it did not rain, the uncle didn’t give Mary any money, Mary did not make a decision)! A person who could produce and understand communications such as this, even though they are through sign rather speech, surely can reasonably said to have language.
Well, research shows that the answer is ‘yes’. Such communicating can be done in signing, at least for fluent signers of such sign languages as American Sign Language, French Sign Language, British Sign Language, and others. It may not be true though of other sign languages, many of which are incomplete syntactically and limited in terms of vocabulary. Inadequate sign languages, it might be noted, are particularly prevalent in developing countries, although in even such a developed nation as Japan, Japanese sign language suffers from certain deficiencies, one reason relating to the continuing prohibition by the national education ministry concerning the teaching and use of sign language in schools for the deaf. The (inadequate) rationale for such a position will be considered in a later section of this chapter.
Furthermore, 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 can communicate as quickly as a speaker can. Not only that but the speed at which signers produce sentences in a signing conversation tends to be the same speed at which speakers produce sentences in a speech conversation. This occurs even though a signer, as does a speaker, has the ability to exceed this speed. There seems to be an optimum speed at which humans are able to comfortably process language information, whether or not that information is in the form of speech or sign.
Before considering the essentials of a complete sign language,
it will be useful, and interesting, to examine a related means of communication
that is used by hearing persons, the use of gestures. Although gestures
at their most complex are but collections of signs and do not form
a true language (they cannot be combined, since there is no grammar, to
form the equivalent of sentences, except in a most rudimentary way (‘You
come’, ‘I happy’), they do play an important part in communication both
independent of and in conjunction with speech.
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Gestures Without Speech
People use a variety of body movements to convey messages, without the use of speech. Most of these movements, which are called gestures, mainly involve the face and hands although the posture of the body is important, as well. We use gestures to communicate a variety of types of messages, such as: Greetings (hello, goodbye), Requests & Commands (come, go, stop), Insults: by children (sticking out of the tongue) and by adults (raising of the middle finger), Answering (yes, no, I don’t know), Evaluating: good/perfect, victory/success), Descriptions (tall, short, long), Referring (self, other, this one, that one), Locating (here, there, up, down) and Scolding (for children, wagging the index finger at them, for adults, a facial scowl). These are only some of the categories for which we have a gestures.
Some gestures are almost universal, such as the moving of the hand or arm toward the body to indicate ‘come’ (Americans make a sweeping motion of the arm from the elbow toward their own body with the hand held in a lateral position while Japanese have their arm outstretched but move only their hand with the palm facing downward), or in pointing to one’s body to indicate ‘self’ (Americans point to their chest while Chinese point to their nose). Interestingly, it might be noted that in indicating self, pointing is directed above and not below the waist.
Most gestures, however, are specific to cultural, linguistic or geographic areas. Thus Sri Lankans shake their head in a way that indicates ‘yes’ or ‘agreement’ for them but indicates ‘no’ or ‘disagreement’ to an American, and, while the Japanese place their index fingers sticking upward on the sides of their head to indicate that someone is ‘angry’, a person from France visiting Japan might, in searching for a meaning, interpret the gesture as ‘cuckold’ after the French language expression “wearing of the horn.s”
Facial movements, in particular, are used everywhere to express a wide range of emotions and feelings. We don’t need to actually utter the words “I am (happy, surprised, disgusted, disappointed, excited, angry, etc.)" when we have in our non-verbal repetoire the amazing flexibility to roll our eyes in exasperation, contract our brow in consternation and haughtily raise our eyebrows (from which, by the way, we get another word for 'haughty'--'supercilious,' meaning, from Latin, 'raised eyebrow'). States of aversion, confusion, attention, distress, love, annoyance, superiority, belligerence, doubt, stupidity, bewilderment, determination, and so on, can all be conveyed by various combinations of facial expression, hand movement and body posture.
In examining gestures, it becomes obvious that some gestures are more related to or suggest the ideas that are intended to represent than are others. The hand and arm gesture for ‘come’, pointing to your own body for ‘self’ or a smile gesture for ‘friendliness’, for example, have a certain closeness. These kinds of gestures having a close relationship between gesture and meaning are called iconic gestures. These iconic gestures are contrasted with more abstract non-iconic gestures. For example, it is not likely that you would be able to guess that a noisy sucking in of breath and an upward looking of the eyes would signal a ‘thoughtfulness’ in segments of Japanese culture. This would be a non-iconic gesture. It contrasts with the iconic gesture that gives some clue as to its meaning. As such we would expect iconic gestures to be easier to acquire.
Besides the general gestures used in a culture, there are also
restricted gestures which are known and used by small groups. These
are typically to be found in specialized fields of work. Stock Trading:
If you have ever watched or have seen pictures of stocks being bought
and sold on the floor of a major exchange, you probably stared in wide-eyed
disbelief at how everything seems to be done with furious hand and finger
signals. Stocks are named, prices quoted and deals are closed. Betting:
At a race-track in Britain, you might see a man signaling with one
right finger in his left ear. He is not relieving an itch but, as a bookmaker
(a bet taker), indicating that the odds on a certain horse are 6
to 4! Music: A symphony conductor will pull the palm back towards
the body to request less volume from the orchestra. Sports: Referees and
judges have elaborate collections of hand and arm gestures to indicate
the state of play and the assignment of points and penalties. Television:
An announcer is presenting the news and the person in charge draws his
index finger across his throat; this would indicate "End it. You are going
off the air". On the other hand, if you were in a repair shop
behind the wheel of your car and running your engine, with the same gesture,
it would be your mechanic instructing you to "stop the engine". But,
if you were on a dark deserted street in a dangerous part of town with
two rough looking characters approaching you, and one signaled the
other with that gesture while looking your way, you would be well advised
to start running in the opposite direction.
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Gestures With Speech
Despite the great number of gestures which are available for use, it is clear that most of the gesturing that people engage in when they communicate occurs spontaneously with speech. While some of these gestures have an iconic sign function, i.e., can be used by itself to convey a meaning, others do not. As an example of the latter, there is beat, where one’s hand or finger is kept in motion and is synchronized with what a person is saying. This is more pronounced in some cultures than others, Italians and Jews, for example, seem to do it more than Japanese and Britons. One Jewish man talking to another man might carry on the beat by continually poking the other in the stomach — actual physical contact. It is doubtful that a Japanese could even be trained to do this.
Beats are constant in form and do not change with the content of the sentences. In making beats, people will move their hands up and down or back and forth. This tends to be done in the periphery of gesture space, such as to the side, not in the central portion. The purpose of beats, according to McNeill in his insightful analysis of gestures, is basically to emphasize the discourse function of concurrent speech. Beats do not add to the content of a description or story but rather serve to emphasize the introduction of new characters, the setting of a scene, the occurrence of some event, and the like. McNeill presents the following case example. A person (A) has been shown a film and is asked to talk about it. A says that the character in the film has a girlfriend and as A says “his girlfriend” he makes a beat. A then says that her first name is Alice and, as he says “Alice,” he makes another beat. A then goes on to say that her family name is White and, as he says “White,” he makes another beat. Three beats were performed successively in this little bit of narrative, one beat per piece of new information. However, it should be noted that many beats may occur with a single sentence and that new information may not be involved.
For example, McNeill describes one 5 year old child saying, in response to being asked what something is, “It’s something else.” As he was saying this the child’s hand rose up and down three times on the armrest of the chair he was sitting in. Even young children acquire quite early the gestures which accompany the speech of their language.
Besides beats, people make another, perhaps more important type of gesture along with speech. This will be an iconic or content gesture which, according to McNeill and his colleagues’ research, occurs just once with each clause. Such gestures occupy the central gesture space and can add to or make more explicit some part of a description or a story line. Thus, for example, when people are asked to describe something they see and utter sentences like “he tries going up the inside of the drainpipe” and “he goes up through the pipe this time,” in both cases the speaker makes an upward gesture, either with the finger or the hand. The gesture is made while uttering the portion of the sentence that has been underlined.
Gesture is so much a part of ordinary speaking that it is virtually
impossible not to gesture. Try giving yourself this test. Describe
in words how a corkscrew works and note what gestures you make in
doing so. Actually, you might find yourself relying more on your
hands than resorting to clumsy phrases about "ascending or descending
in a conical fashion around a central point". Watching the icon and beat
gestures that people make will probably make you laugh. But, if you stifle
that urge to smile or laugh aloud while someone is talking to you, you
will be surprised at what you will learn!
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TYPES OF SIGN LANGUAGE
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. These differ as to whether the signs represent ordinary languages. Thus, there are sign languages which represent (through signs) ordinary languages, such as Swedish, English and French, and there are sign languages which are independent of ordinary language, such as American Sign Language and French Sign Language.
SIGN LANGUAGES REPRESENTING SPELLING OR SPEECH
Sign language based on ordinary language can be of two different kinds. One such kind represents words by spelling them out 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 O 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, following English spelling. Words and entire sentences are communicated in this letter by letter method. The order of letters would be exactly the one that occurs in the writing of the ordinary language.
There are both one and two hand systems of finger spelling, The Americans and Swedes, for example, use one hand, while the British use two. Users of both systems can sign relatively quickly but still the process is laborious. (The two handed system is somewhat faster and provides more easily identifiable letters, it does not leave a hand free for other uses.) Although few schools use finger spelling as a complete language system (the Rochester School is the most notable example), signers of all systems do learn and use finger spelling since it is essential for the spelling out of proper names, e.g., Manila, Carol, Albertson. A person brought up solely with a finger spelling system would know it as a native language, one in the signing mode. In order to be able to read ordinary language, such a person would then have to learn the written alphabetic counterparts. This would be a simple task, however, and is an advantage of the system.
More popular than finger spelling is a kind of sign language which is based on ordinary speech. It uses whole signs for each word or meaningful word part (morpheme). One sign for ‘enough’, for example, would be used (not a series of letters). Seeing Essential English and Signing Exact English are typical of such sign systems. These languages follow in signs the exact linear flow of the spoken words. For example, “I asked John for the cards” would have a sign for each English morpheme in that sentence, signed in the same order as the spoken sentence: I + ask + PAST + John + for + the + card + PLURAL. The word “asked” would have a separate sign for the root ‘ask’ and a separate sign for the suffix marking past tense. Similarly, ‘card’ and a sign marking the plural would have separate signs.
A sign system based on a one to one correspondence between sign and morphemes of speech has a great advantage for the learner. For, by learning it, not only will person be able to communicate with other hearing impaired persons (who know the system) but the learner will also have learned the syntax and vocabulary of the ordinary language. The ordinary language would not have to be learned as a second language as far as vocabulary and syntax is concerned. Also knowing such a system also will make it very easy for the learner to learn to read. In addition, the system has the advantage of making it much easier for hearing persons, particularly hearing parents who have a deaf child, to learn a sign language system which they can use with their child, for, the system is one that is based on a grammar which they already know. However, despite these advantages, Signers often prefer the next type of sign language to be discussed. It is one that is regarded as being more natural to the signer and easier to use. However, because it is a sign language that is independent of ordinary language, ordinary language must be learned as a second language. This is not a great barrier to overcome however.
SIGN LANGUAGE INDEPENDENT OF ORDINARY LANGUAGE (SL)
Some Characteristics of SL
The signs of a sign language that is independent of a speech based language (hereafter SL) can be broken down into three basic components: Hand Configuration, Place of Articulation and Movement. These terms have abbreviated forms for the sake of convenience and are also called dez (for designator, the configuration of the hand), tab (for tabula, the location or place of articulation) and sig (for signation, the action or movement of the hand). Thus, dez, tab and sig, then, are as vital to an adequate description of sign language as are terms related to a description of speech.
There are even 'minimal pairs' in sign language just as in speech; words which differ in only one articulatory feature, such as the voiced and unvoiced quality in the initial consonants of “bear” and “pear.” In ASL, too, there are signs which differ in only one of the three distinctive features. For example, the ASL signs for ‘apple,’ ‘candy,’ and ‘jealous’ are identical in tab and sig, that is, in place of articulation (the cheek) and movement (rotating). They differ only in dez, the configuration of the hand. Similarly, the signs for ‘chair’ and ‘train’ differ only in movement; they are articulated in the same place with the same configuration of the hand.
Just as it is possible to make slips of the tongue in spoken language,
to invert sounds and produce amusing items such as “May I sew you to a
sheet?” instead of “May I show you to a seat?,” or nonsense such
as “tup of key” instead of “cup of tea,” it is equally possible in
ASL to have a "slip of the hand" on one of the three features of a sign
and consequently produce the wrong word or a nonsense one which could
exist but doesn't. This allows for punning to be used
in sign language. Also the visual equivalent of rhyming can occur; here
signs which are the same in two of the three features can be used to create
an effective and aesthetically pleasing combinations-- sign poetry.
Then, too, when comparing ASL to say, Chinese Sign Language, we find not unexpectedly, that not only are the signs themselves completely different, but, also, that ASL uses a slightly more pinched hand configuration, with the fingers curling under, fist-like, into the palm, much more so than in CSL. If a signer of CSL learned to sign ASL with all the correct features of articulation mentioned above, yet kept his or her hand configuration in the less pinched CSL fashion, the result would be perfectly understandable to a signer of ASL, yet there would be something different about it. It would be the sign language equivalent of speaking with a foreign accent!
At the word level of ordinary language, there are not only words which differ completely in meaning from one another, but also words which are very much related, differing only in morphology, or form. For example, in English from the word ‘compare,’ words like ‘compared,’ ‘compares,’ ‘comparing’ and ‘comparison’ are derived. Such morphological changes have equivalents with signs, as well. Adjusting the movement of a sign by changing the speed or tension or rate of repetition, gives an SL the ability to derive nouns from verbs, such as ‘comparison’ from ‘compare’ as well as produce derivations which are unique to the SL. For example, in ASL the signs for ‘church,’ ‘pious,’ and ‘narrow-minded’ (!) differ only in their "three-dimensional morphology," so to speak. That is, they differ only in the manner of movement involved.
There are, then, uninflected forms of signs which can be defined by
the features of place, configuration and movement, with variations in movement
providing the means for morphological variation and changes in aspect.
Aspect is the form a verb takes to indicate duration or completion of an
action, and in ASL, variations in the movement of a sign will convey the
differences between ‘to go,’ ‘used to go,’ ‘going,’ etc.
Thus, we see that in SL words word and morpheme signs are manipulated in
much the same way as are spoken words to change form so as to provide variation
in grammatical classes and meaning.
The Syntax of Sign Language
In a speech based language, individual words are structured together
into sentences according to syntactic rules, the heart of the grammar of
a language. SL, too, has rules which govern the relationship between individual
signs in a sentence. While the words and morphemes of sentences in languages
such as Signing Exact English are signed in the air on a sort of imaginary
two dimensional blackboard, in a word by word (and morpheme) linear sequence,
SL sentences are radically different. Sentences are not linear sequences
but three dimensional creations. Such a space allows for combinations of
meanings and the simultaneous blending of a number of meaning elements
that cannot be produced linearly. As a result signed sentences can be produced
quickly and with a minimum of effort.
The proper indexing or apportionment of space is crucial to producing
grammatical sentences in SL. Nouns, pronouns and verbs, for example, have
to be assigned points in the speaker’s space. These points have to be differentiated
throughout a sentence and remain as reference points such that the component
relations of the sentence, the noun phrase subject, verb and noun phrase
object, are related to one another in a coherent fashion. The area in front
of a speaker's torso is a field in which, for example, pronoun references
can be signed--a ‘he’ or ‘she’ left hanging in space, as it were— and referred
back to as 'relative pronouns'. Verbs of movement follow paths through
this
space from point to point, their starting and end points indicating
subject and object. Variations of movement can occur within this space
to show time and aspect, and spaces can be built within spaces to embed
one sentence within another, to contrast one event with another or to refer
to something further back in time. Violation of the rules which govern
the relationship between signs will lead to confusion, with the occurrence
of poorly formed and ambiguous sentences, much the same as what happens
in speech when rules of grammar are broken.
The parallels between language in the oral/aural modality, speech, and that in the visual modality, sign language, are very striking. In acquiring SL as a first language. Deaf children, for example, go through stages of language acquisition which are similar to those of hearing children. Their signing goes through a single sign stage and even a telegraphic stage of simple sign productions where inflections and function signs are not included. Deaf children also make overgeneralizations in their signs, the equivalent of a hearing child calling all men “daddy.” However, deaf children must face and overcome linguistic problems which are unique to SL, such as the proper indexing of space. Young signers at the age of three or three and a half have not yet differentiated their signing space correctly. But by age five, they have. This is clear evidence of their having acquired the essentials of the formal language system. This is around the same age, too, when hearing children have successfully come through the most difficult aspects of language acquisition.
SIGN LANGUAGE, BRAIN AND APHASIA
There is a very striking parallel between speech and sign language that is especially interesting since it confirms what research has found about language and the hemispheres of the brain. Readers will recall that it is the left hemisphere that is the site of the major language areas of the brain, and this includes Broca's and Wernicke's Areas. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, has been shown to be superior at spatial tasks such as facial recognition and visuoconstructive tasks such as copying designs and patterns. Following this division of the hemispheres as 'left for language' and 'right for spatial,' it might seem that the right hemisphere would be the one to be more involved with the production and comprehension of SL, since signing is a space related phenomenon. Strong evidence, however, from the study of sign language aphasics shows that this is not the case.
Native signers of ASL who have suffered trauma such as stroke (cerebral infarction) to the left hemisphere will produce sign language equivalents of Broca's Aphasia or Wernicke's Aphasia. The signed language of a Broca's aphasic consists largely of uninflected forms with little ability to use the signing space as a grammatical framework to mark verbs or persons, aspect or morphological changes. It is as awkward and halting as is Broca's Aphasia in spoken language. Patients may be accurate in making a single sign in response to a request to name an object or they may make a sign successfully when it has a simple uninflected meaning, but, be unable to produce a similar movement to indicate grammatical function such as the direct object. One patient was able to make the proper path movement towards the body to sign ‘accept’ but not a similar movement for ‘blame-me.’ The implication is that the inability to produce correct signs is not due to a motor dysfunction; it is a defect in grammatical functioning.
Similarly, the SL equivalent of Wernicke's Aphasia will, in general, be grammatical in nature. A patient will produce fluent strings of signs, taking advantage of three-dimensional space for morphology, aspect, pronoun reference, etc. However, because of frequent "slips of the hand", with substitutions made with at all three features of signs, configuration, location and movement, the result is the production of many meaningless individual signs or of signs which have meaning but are nonsensical in sentences. And, just as in Wernicke's Aphasia for speech, much substitution occurs within the same lexical category: nouns for nouns, verbs for verbs, etc. Furthermore, substitution occurs, too, along semantically related lines, such as ‘daughter’ for ‘son’ or ‘bed’ for ‘chair,’ producing similarly bizarre results. One signing patient displayed Wernicke Aphasia symptoms in his writing as well as sign language, leading researchers to conclude that there is a general linguistic dysfunction at work and not just a motor dysfunction impairing the ability to sign.
ASL signers who have suffered damage to the right hemisphere generally do not display aphasia symptoms in the production of signs. Their sign production seems to remain grammatical and unimpeded. However, these same persons are likely to suffer some impairment in their comprehension of signs. Why it should be the case that their ability to understand signs is disturbed but their ability produce signs is not, as yet remains unexplained.
In any case, the same general patterns of aphasia emerge in speech and sign language. Patients with left hemisphere damage suffer the same aphasias whether their language is a spoken one or a signed one. Thus, even though the right hemisphere is disposed to process spatial tasks, when the task involved is a linguistic one and spatial syntax is involved, the left hemisphere is dominant. Clearly it is the left hemisphere that is specially equipped to handle language, no matter if the modality of the language be that of speech or sign.
5. THE SIGN LANGUAGE STRUGGLE IN DEAF EDUCATION
SL OUT OF THE CLOSET AND INTO RESPECTABILITY
As recently as the 1970’s some theorists denied that a sign language could be a genuine language, one which fits the criteria for language. Such scholarly denial reflected the biased opinion of many hearing persons to the effect that the gestures of the deaf were little more than a magnified version of nodding, shrugging and pointing. What else was there to it? After all, aren’t gestures just an addition to normal speech? However, research over the past 25 years on SLs has clearly demonstrated that such a view is false. ASL and a number of other SLs are indeed languages and complete ones at that.
Much of the bias against SL stemmed from a poor understanding of the nature of language. Until the mentalist revolution in linguistics and psychology initiated by Chomsky in the 1960s, language was often equated with speech in a behavioristic type of conception. (Such a view is documented in the discussion of language and thought in Chapter 1 and in the discussion on Behaviorism and Mentalism in Chapter 5.) After the revolution, language began to be perceived as knowledge in the mind that is related to but independent of its physical manifestation in speech. Such a conceptual separation is just what sign language researchers needed for pursuing their investigations into the nature of SL.
The result was a change in the strong belief held by educators and the general public that speech was necessary for one to be truly human. The change started slow in the 1960s but soon picked up and by the middle of the 1970s the proponents of SL began to win out. In most schools for the deaf in the U.S., Sweden, Britain and other countries the ban against SL was lifted and SL began to be actively taught.
It was during that same period that, along with this boost given SL by educators and researchers, the SL deaf community came out of the closet, so to speak. Signers began to gain confidence and pride and to communicate such feelings to the public at large. No longer did the SL deaf and their hearing friends and relatives feel embarrassed and a need to hide away.
When about 20 years ago actress Louise Fletcher (a hearing person) made her acceptance speech for an Academy Award for her role in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, she caused quite a stir when she simultaneously interpreted her own speech into ASL for the benefit of her deaf mother and father who were at home watching the show on television. Today, it is commonplace in many countries to see various TV programs with simultaneous interpretation in SL in a corner of the screen, but it wasn’t always that way.
The problems of the deaf and deaf education even became a major theme in another well known film, Children of a Lesser God. This award-winning film also has served to dispel some of the misconceptions which were held by the public. Then, too, just a few years ago, there was a controversy at America's only college for the deaf, Gallaudet College in Washington, D.C. A hearing woman had been appointed dean but because she could not communicate in ASL — the language used by students and faculty on campus — the students began to protest, and their protest was reported on all of the major news networks in America. This publicity and ensuing sympathy for the aims of the students combined with the students’ constant demonstrations finally forced the university administration to back down and appoint a dean who was bilingual in spoken English and ASL.
This incident, too, served in some degree to make the hearing community more aware of the deaf and SL. Successful tours of the (American) National Theater of the Deaf have contributed to this awareness, as well. Now more than ever, the American public is more respectful of, and even has a healthy curiosity about, signers of SL. Many people now study sign language as a pastime even when they don’t know any hearing-impaired persons. This is common in Japan, for example, especially in university campus clubs. The girl who recently married the younger son of the Emperor was a member of such a club. There is an irony here because Japan’s Ministry of Education prohibits the teaching of sign language to the hearing-impaired in the public schools!
SL has become so widespread that now approximately 75 percent of the deaf community in the United States and Canada use ASL when communicating with one another. SL allows these people to communicate in a highly efficient way through a three dimensional visual means that is natural to them. However, how deaf people are to communicate with members of the dominant hearing community is a problem. Barring the unlikely event that hearing people will learn SL on a mass scale, it is necessary for the deaf to acquire some means for communicating with hearing persons. In this regard two main approaches are available. One is the traditional Oral Approach. The other is one that seems new and is little known, the Written Language Approach. These approaches are best regarded as complementary and not mutually exclusive.
6.. THE ORAL AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE APPROACHES
THE ORAL APPROACH
Aside from the general public, just who was it that the SL people have been fighting with for recognition over the years? Well, these have been the proponents of the teaching of speech through what is known as The Oral Approach. The Oral Approach has a worthy aim, to teach the hearing-impaired to produce and understand speech so that they can communicate with the hearing community. Certain staunch supporters of this approach, however, also advocate its use as the sole means of communication among the deaf, with sign language entirely excluded.
These people, even when they do admit that sign language is a language, have argued that the learning and use of sign language negatively affects the acquisition of speech and that without speech there will be defective thinking. The teaching of reading and written language are attacked for similar reasons. (This is why the teaching of reading in so many deaf schools was (and often still is) delayed until children are beyond the second or third grade.) These contentions are false, as research shows. Yet such erroneous ideas are still held in parts of America and even widespread in other countries, Japan, for example, where the Ministry of Education, as was mentioned earlier, forbids the teaching of sign language.
In the Oral Approach, as far as the teaching of production is concerned, children from the the age of 2 or 3 years onward are specially trained in the skill of articulating speech sounds. Also, nowadays it is not uncommon to have some computerized equipment that displays sounds and assists in the teaching. Many children do respond and do acquire a fair ability to speak. It is this success that justifies the application of the approach. Unfortunately, this success has encouraged some overzealous proponents to regard the approach as one of absolute salvation, to the exclusion of all others.
The understanding of speech is usually taught through both exploiting any residual hearing that learners may have and the teaching of ‘speechreading,’ commonly known as “lipreading.” With speechreading, an adept person can interpret about 50% of what is said, which, given the great amount of redundancy in what people say, is enough to guess most of the content. Many sounds like most vowels, e.g., /a/, /e/, /u/, /i/, and many consonants like /k/, /g/, /l/, /r/, /s/, /sh/, /ch/ and /j/, are particularly difficult to identify visually and, of course, present problems for the viewer. Language such as Japanese where there is relatively little lip and facial movement in speech poses especially difficult problems.
A great disadvantage of the Oral Approach is that it only works 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 understand speech. Thus, relatively few children who are born with a severe or profound hearing loss (over 75 or 80 decibels in their better ear) acquire any significant degree of speech. Even those with a lesser hearing loss often do not acquire sufficiently clear pronunciation such that they are understood by ordinary hearing persons.
As a result of a pure Oral Approach education, many hearing impaired persons were left not only being unable to communicate with the hearing community but without being adequately to communicate with their hearing impaired comrades as well. It is for this reason, and the advanced thinking of influential educators of the deaf, that programs including both the Oral Approach and sign language began to be introduced. These programs, which go by the name of Total Communication, spread in the 1970s in the U.S., Canada and other countries. Consequently, for the most part, the controversy in many countries over admitting sign language into the educational curriculum for the hearing-impaired is now over. Japan, unfortunately, is a notable exception in this regard.
However, although the Total Communication approach has improved
the lot of the deaf in a significant way, a great educational problem still
remains. The hearing-impaired cannot read well. On the average, most
hearing-impaired persons, graduate from high school with a reading level
equivalent only to that of a hearing child in Grade 5 of elementary
school. Their writing ability is commensurately poorer. This has been found
in the U.S., Japan and other countries. Such a level of literacy cannot
but negatively affect their entire lives. Few are able to go to university
and most are able to secure only low level jobs, when they are able to
secure jobs at all. Given that the hearing-impaired must be able to read
and write ordinary language at a high standard of excellence in order to
realize
their potential in modern society, an additonal approach is needed.
That approach could well be The Written Language Approach.
THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE APPROACH
The Basic Idea
The essential idea of this approach is that the meaningful written forms of an ordinary speech based language such as English or Japanese (its words, phrases and sentences) are acquired by a direct association with objects, events and situations in the environment. Thus, just as hearing children learn language by initially associating the speech sounds that they hear with environmental experiences, hearing impaired children can learn language in a similar way, but through an association of written forms with environmental experiences.
As a result, hearing impaired children acquire essentially the same
vocabulary and syntax of the language of the hearing because in a written
language such as English, Japanese or Chinese, virtually all of the vocabulary
and syntactic structures that appear in speech also appear in writing,
e.g., subject-verb relations, object-verb relations, negation, question,
relative clause formation, passives.
This is not to say that there are no differences in speech and
writing. Essentially, however, one basic grammar underlies both mediums
of expression. Because virtually any sentence or idea that can be expressed
in speech can be expressed in writing, we can say, by analogy, that written
language can be regarded as a complete language. Its main difference with
speech concerns the physical means of transmission--writing involves light,
while speech involves sound.
Historical Perspective
Actually, the ideas proposed here are by no means new, although few in deaf education are aware of them. When the first author of this book thought of them, he truly believed they were original with him. Can you imagine his shock, after his successfully completing original research with American and Japanese deaf children using this approach, to discover that Alexander Graham Bell in 1880 had taught written language to a 5 year old deaf boy with some success and that 200 years before him, Dalgarno in 1680, had proposed the same approach in London! Bell was aware of Dalgarno’s conception, for, in 1883 Bell stated, “I believe that George Dalgarno . . . has given us the true principle to work upon when he asserts that a deaf person should be taught to read and write in as nearly as possible the same way that young ones are taught to speak and understand their mother tongue. We should talk to the deaf child just as we do to the hearing one, with the exception that words are to be addressed to his eye instead of his ear.”
Perhaps Itard, too, may have been aware of Dalgarno’s ideas. In any
case, he, too, used a written language approach with Victor,
the Wild Boy of Aveyron and was quite successful in comparison
to his efforts in using speech.
Somehow in the 1970s the idea of the written language approach
began to sprout once again. There has been some talk of it in Europe
as well as in America and Japan. However, other than the work of Steinberg
(with English and Japanese) and Suzuki (with Japanese), no long term research
with a number of children has been done.
Written Language and Reading Distinguished
Aside from teaching written language directly to hearing-impaired preschool children, there has has also been some research in teaching reading to children of that age group, as well. Such teaching has been successfully done through the medium of sign language or speech. At this point it would be well to consider what the distinction between written language and reading might be. The main difference is that written language is learned directly from the environment without the use of any prior linguistic medium, such as sign language or speech, that the person may have. Reading, however, is learned through a linguistic medium.
Thus, we say that a hearing person learns to read (they do not learn written language) because that person already has language based on speech prior to learning to read and reading is taught in a way that uses that speech. We typically point to a written word <dog> and say “dog” although sometimes we also point to the actual animal or a picture of it while saying the word. And we point to written words, <The little dog cried> and say “The little dog cried”. The child learns to interpret the written words by means of the vocabulary and syntax which the child has already learned in speech. This is teaching reading.
But, if we do the pointing to the word and to the animal or picture,
then this is teaching written language. Even if we utter speech sounds
along with the pointing, a child who is deaf and not able to receive those
sounds will not be able to make use of them. Thus, in this this the child
is learning written language. The child must discover the meaning of the
vocabulary items and must infer the syntactic relations that pertain to
those items. The child does not have the advantage of having this knowledge
already through speech.
Assessment of The Written Language Approach
There are a number of advantages to the Written Language Approach.
These are:
1. The learning medium is appropriate. Perception of written items
depends on vision, a medium in which the normal hearing-impaired
have full capability.
2. Instruction can begin early. Parents of hearing-impaired children
can teach their children written language at home during the children’s
most formative years. Children as young as 6 months can be exposed to written
language in a natural way, and learn in the supportive comfort of their
own home. Thus, children of hearing parents need not have to wait until
2 or 3 years of age before they would be taken to school for sign language
or speech instruction.
3. Written language knowledge need not be acquired by the instructors.
Parents and teachers of the hearing-impaired do not have to learn the written
language in order to teach it; they already know it. (Hearing parents who
wish to acquire sign language which they can pass on to their children
must spend years in learning it, just as they would any other second language.)
Only relatively simple instructional methods and techniques have to be
acquired.
4. All hearing-impaired children can benefit. Effort devoted to teaching
written language is never wasted since whatever is learned will improve
the child’s level of literacy in the future whether the child learns speech
or sign language.
5. Written language acquisition is compatible with other approaches.
Written language can be taught in conjunction with other approaches, Oral
or sign language, without any damage to the integrity of these approaches.
6. Written language knowledge can facilitate speech. By learning written
language, the syntax and vocabulary that underlies the speech of an ordinary
language are also learned. Acquisition of such knowledge reduces the burden
of oral instruction.
The production of written language is a problem for the child
at a young age. For, until a child reaches 4 or 5 years, the child does
not have adequate neuromuscular control to be able to write and to
write for long periods. Unless the child has acquired a sign language capacity
or speech, there is little a child can do to communicate with others
in writing, except to carry around an alphabet board or word cards (like
those Itard made for Victor). Advancing technology, however, may provide
a solution to this problem in the form of a computerized mobile keyboard
and display screen, which would be suitably designed for a young child
to carry around.
FINAL REMARKS ON DEAF EDUCATION
A number of different approaches to deaf education have been discussed, Sign Language, Oral Approach and Written Language Approach. It is our view that the hearing-impaired would benefit by the application of all of these approaches. While some approaches may be more beneficial than others depending on the hearing loss, it is only just that every hearing-impaired person should be presented the opportunity to expand their linguistic skills by each and every one of them.
Poizner, H., Klima, Edward S. and Bellugi U. (1987) What the Hands
Reveal About the Brain. Cambridge: MIT Press.