THE DEAF

AND
LANGUAGE:
Desy Catur K.
Khairunnisa
 A. Sign
Language
1. True Language
Sign language is a true language,
• The language system allows a signer to
comprehend and produce an indefinitely large
number of grammatical sentences in signs.

• A signing person can communicate by sign

whatever can be communicated by speech.
 A. Sign
Language
2. Language based on speech compared to language
based on signs
There is a difference in the physical means of
communication: signing involves light and speech
involves sound.
When a person could comprehend and produce
communications such as an abstract sentence,
through sign rather than speech, surely he or she has a
language.
 A. Sign
Language
3. Complete and incomplete sign language
Findings showed that signers of such sign languages
as ASL, FSL, BSL, and others, can indeed communicate
in sign whatever is expressed in speech.

Other sign languages may be incomplete

syntactically or limited vocabulary. (typically found in
developing countries)
 A. Sign
Language
4. Speed of signing and speaking sentences is
comparable
The speed at which signers produce sentences in a
signed conversation tends to be similar to that at
which speakers produce sentences in a spoken
conversation.
 A. Sign
Language
5. Dialects and foreign accents in sign language
There may even be strong dialectic differences. For
example, signers from Paris have difficulty in
understanding signers from Lyon, and vice versa.
6. There is no universal sign language
Although there are similarities among languages,
but there is no universal sign language same as there
is no universal speech-based language.
 B. Gestures are signs but
not form a language
1. Gestures using arms, head, torso
Greetings Hello, goodbye Moving the hands and arms
Requests/commands Come, go, stop Moving the hands
Insults The sticking out of the tongue by
children
Answers Yes, no, I don’t know Moving the head
Evaluations Good/perfect Making a circle with the
thumb and index finger
Success/victory Making the V letter with two fingers
Descriptions Tall, short, long Use of the hands and arms
Referring To self, others, this one, that one Pointing with a finger
 B. Gestures are signs but
not form a language
2. Facial gestures
Facial movements are used everywhere to convey a
wide range of emotions and feelings. Some of these
gestures are natural and universal.
All can be conveyed in context by facial
expressions, supplemented, or not, with hand
movements and body posture.
 B. Gestures are signs but
not form a language
3. Gestures with speech
Every speech community has its own distinctive
gestures that are coordinated with speech. While
alone these gestures do not indicate a meaning,
with speech they generally do serve some function
such as to emphasize a meaning or to indicate new
information.
 C. Speech-based sign
languages

There are 2 types of sign language based on the speech of ordinary

language:
• Speech-based sign languages
94%
Represent spoken words and the order of these words or
morphemes as they appear in ordinary spoken languages, such as
Swedish, English, and French.
• Independent of ordinary language
80%
Not speech-based and not mutually intelligible, such as ASL and
BSL. These sign languages developed their own words and
grammatical systems for the production and understanding of
sentences. These called as Independent Sign Language (ISLs)
 C. Speech-based sign
languages
1.Finger spelling: letter by
letter 94%
According to this
system words are
represented by spelling
them out letter by letter in 80%
terms of individual signs ,
where each sign
represents a letter of the
alphabet.
 C. Speech-based sign
languages
2. Morpheme by Morpheme (MnM)
A sign system that uses a whole sign for each speech
word or meaningful part, i.e. a morpheme. Signing Exact
94%
English and Seeing Essential English are typical of this type.
These language systems follow in sign the exact linear flow
of spoken words. 80%
I asked John for the cards

I + ask + PAST + John + for + the + card + PLURAL

 C. Speech-based sign
languages

Advantages of MnM systems:

94%
• Learner simultaneously acquires the morphology and syntax
of both the sign and related speech-based language
• Easier for an adult hearing person to learn an MnM than an
ISL
80%
Disadvantages of MnM systems
• Children do not learn MnM easily
• MnM is not preferred by the deaf community
 D. Independent Sign
Languages (ISLs) ->
ASL
1. Characteristics of ISLs
Three basic components of ISL:
• Hand configuration: the shape that the hand forms
• Place of articulation: where in space the hand is
formed
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• Movement: how the hand moves

 D. Independent Sign
Languages (ISLs) ->
ASL
2. The syntax of a typical ISL: American Sign Language
• Thomas Gallaudet saw the need of education for deaf
children. He went to Europe and brought Laurent
Clerc, a deaf teacher from deaf school in Paris, to
America to start a deaf school together in 1817.
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• ASL is not linear sequences but three-dimensional

creations. Thus, signed sentences can be produced
quickly and with a minimum of effort.
 D. Independent Sign
Languages (ISLs) ->
ASL
• In acquiring ASL as a first language, deaf children go
through stages of language acquisition.

• Their signing goes through a single-sign stage and

even a telegraphic stage of simple sign productions
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where inflections and function signs are not included.
 D. Independent Sign
Languages (ISLs) ->
ASL
3. The process of learning ASL
• Most deaf children are born into hearing families.
• Hearing parents were often discouraged from learning sign
language
• Among the profoundly deaf, native signers do better in
speech,
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Here Your Title Here and reading abilities (Meadow,
1966,1980)
• The most potent variable in the ability to produce speech is
the degree of hearing loss (Jensema, 1975; Quigley and
Paul,1986).
 E. The Oral Approach
and Total
Communication
1.Oral Approach successful with the less hearing-
impaired
2.Oral Approach fails with the severely hearing-
impaired
3.Speechreading (lipreading) is not easy
4.A sensible approach: Total Communication
 F. The sign language vs. Oral
Approach

1. Rationale of Oral advocates in excluding sign language

• Daniel Ling and Ewings (Ewing and Ewing, 1964), may
reluctantly admit that sign language is a language.
• If anything, knowledge of ASL and reading facilitates the
acquisition of speech (Meadow, 1966; Steinberg et al.,
1982)
 F. The sign language vs. Oral
Approach
2. One formidable advocate of the oral Approach: Alexander
Graham Bell
a. Alexander Graham Bell comes to America
• (for Independent Sign Language) Second International
Congress on Education of the Deaf in Milan 1880.
• American Convention of Instructors of the Deaf (1886)
that Bell emphatically presented the view that only speech
should be though to the deaf regardless of their degree of
hearing loss (Bell, 1883).
• Within a year of his arrival in North America in 1870 he
was teaching deaf children in Boston.
 F. The sign language vs. Oral
Approach

• His mother was deaf, his hearing father was a well-known

educator of the deaf who had invented a written phonetic
alphabet.
• He was world famous as the inventor of the telephone in
Boston (1875)
• Bill and his faction were successful: sign language was
banned from most schools for the deaf (nearly a hundred
years to be overcome).
 F. The sign language vs. Oral
Approach
b. Bell versus Edward Gallaudet
• Bell’s anti-sign position was pitted against the leader of the
pro-sign group in America.
• He was the head of the Gallaudet America Asylum; the son
of Thomas Gallaudet (one of the founders of ASL, Edward M.
Gallaudet)
• The backgrounds of Bell and Edward were Startlingly similar
• Edward Gallaudet later became sympathetic to the oral
method to the degree that he advocated a ‘Combine
Method’
 G. Public recognition of ASL
and growth of deaf pride
1. ISLs out of the closet and into respectability
• 1970s some deaf educators (anti-sign) denied that a sign
language could be a genuine language
• Spearheaded by Chomsky in the 1960s, bringing back of the
concepts of mind and mentalism into psychology and linguistics
after the downfall of the anti-mentalist Behaviourists
• The advent of mentalism, language began to be widely perceived
as a kind of knowledge in the mind that related to, but exists
independently of, its physical manifestation in speech or sign
 G. Public recognition of ASL
and growth of deaf pride
• Language and not speech became to be regarded as the true
distinguishing human characteristic
• The change started slowly in the 1960s but soon gathered
momentum
• The middle of 1970s the proponents of ASL began to succeed
• Soon ASL was actively taught in a large number of schools for the
deaf in the United State and Canada following by Sweden and
others countries.
• With the boost given to ASL by educators and researcher, the ASL
deaf community came out of the closet, so to speak
 G. Public recognition of ASL
and growth of deaf pride
2. Growing recognition and interest in sign language
worldwide
• It is commonplace in many countries to see various TV
programmes, meeting, and special events with simultaneous
interpreters present for the benefit of the deaf
• Japan and most countries were only in the past few years
have things started to change
• United State, Canada, and many others countries of the
European Community that took the lead in this respect
 G. Public recognition of ASL
and growth of deaf pride
3. Deaf pride in the USA
a. Denying deafness as an impairment
b. The issue of cochlear implants and other devices
• Cochlear implant approved by the US Food and Drug
Administration in 1985 (closest thing to a ‘cure’ for
deafness at present)
• Supporters say implant allow some people to
overcome their hearing disability, while opponents
object to the vary idea of trying to cure the deaf
 G. Public recognition of ASL
and growth of deaf pride
c. A sensible course of action
Dr. Robert Ruben, an ear-nose-and-throat specialist at Montefiore
Hospital in the Bronx said:
If I had a deaf child, I would implant one ear, leaving the other free in
case cures develop that require an intact inner ear. I would bring up that
child bilingually. Parents could phase out sign later on if they wanted, but
it should not be abandoned until it becomes clear that the child can
develop satisfactory oral language. The worst mistake is for parents to
neglect the one most important thing – that language of any kind, no
matter what kind, must somehow be got into the child soon enough.
(Solomon, 1994, p. 31)
 H. The Steinberg Written Language
Approach for complete
communication
1. How the deaf can communicate with the hearing and succeed in
the workplace
―The need for literacy 94%
Speech (Oral Approach)
Written Language Approach

80%
―Low level of literacy leads to low-level jobs
 Given the overwhelming necessity of being able to read and write
in order to function well in modern society, it is not surprising that
we find that most deaf people generally are able to secure only
low-level jobs.
 Written Language Bilingual Approach
 H. The Steinberg Written Language
Approach for complete
communication
―Written communication by notes

94%
• With deaf persons largely unable to have their speech understood,
they can use written notes for personal communication.
• A note written by a deaf person will receive more attention and
respect than if that person used mumbled speech.
―Why teaching of reading/written language has been failed thus far
80%
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) The
distinction between reading and written language The Written Language
Approach Advantages of the learning of written language Research on
teaching written language to young children
 H. The Steinberg Written Language
Approach for complete
communication
2. The Distinction between reading and Written Language
94%
• Reading: A person who knows a speech-based language and
then learns to interpret the written correspondences for that
speech is doing what we call reading.

80%
• Written language: When that person can interpret writing,
then we can say that the person is interpreting a written
language.
 H. The Steinberg Written Language
Approach for complete
communication
3. The Written Language Approach

94%
• The essential idea of this approach is that the meaningful written
forms of an ordinary speech-based language 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. 80%
• Thus, just as hearing children learn language, initially by 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 those environmental
experiences.
 H. The Steinberg Written Language
Approach for complete
communication
4. Advantages of the learning of written language
The learning medium is appropriate
No new knowledge need be acquired by instructors 94%
Instruction and begin in infancy
All hearing-impaired children can benefit
Written language acquisition can facilitate speech 80%
Written language teaching is compatible with other approaches
 H. The Steinberg Written Language
Approach for complete
communication
5. Research on teaching written language to young children
94%
• Since the time of Alexander Graham Bell, when he taught
written language to a 5-year-old deaf boy for a period of two
years with some success (Bell, 1883), to the latter part of the
twentieth century, there has been little interest in the
teaching of written language.
• Teaching written language by mean of sign
80%
• Pioneers in this type of research are Williams (1968) in
teaching the reading of English, and Söderbergh (1976) in the
teaching of Swedish.
 I. A Programme for
teaching written
languages
Guilding principles
words are best acquired as conceptual wholes in a relevant
context
phrases and sentences are best acquired in a relevant context
through induction, just as hearing children learn theirfirst
language
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1. What to teach? The important things in the child’s experience
To the extent that hearing-impaired children experience the
same environment as hearing children, the hearing-impaired can
acquire the same concepts relating to that environment.
 I. A Programme for
teaching written
languages
2. Written language comprehension, not productive, is primary
Now, as far as the hearing-impaired child who is learning written
language is concerned, a similar primacy of comprehension over
production obtains. In this case, however, comprehension consists of the
interpretation of written forms, and production consists of the writing of
such forms.
3. WordYour Title Here
learning Your Title Here

The ideal way for a young hearing-impaired child to learn words in

their written form is in much the same way as a young hearing child does:
exposure to words in conjunction with the objects, situations, and
ongoing events in the environment.
 I. A Programme for
teaching written
languages
4. Inappropriateness of direct letter learning
• When hearing children experience speech words in the
home, they experience them as wholes: the words dog and
cat, for example, are pronounced as wholes.
• Evidence shows that the analytical and conceptualizing
processes
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those of hearing children (Furth, 1971)
 I. A Programme for
teaching written
languages
5. Greater use of learning meaningful written units
American pre-school children, Steinberg and Koono (1979)
found that English words were learned at more than twice the
rate of English letters.
Similar findings have been reported for Japanese children, who
learned
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Here (complex Chinese-type characters) at least twice
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as quickly as meaningless syllable symbols (Steinberg and
Yamada, 1978–9).
 I. A Programme for
teaching written
languages
6. Phrase and sentence acquisition
Just as hearing children learn the syntax of language without
direct instruction by exposure to phrases and sentences used in a
relevant environmental context, hearing-impaired children learn
the syntax of written language in the same way.
7. A four-phase
Your Title Here programme for teaching written language
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Word Familiarization
Word Identification
Phase and Sentence identification
Paragraphs and Stories
 I. A Programme for
teaching written
languages
8. Effectiveness of the teaching programme

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Thank You