Return-Path: <nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id fAJLlF009423; Mon, 19 Nov 2001 16:47:15 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 16:47:15 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <Pine.GSO.3.95-960729.1011119204250.11380A-100000@altair.dur.ac.uk> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: S E Kirk <S.E.Kirk@durham.ac.uk> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-LD:3785] Re: Deaf, communication issues X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O Content-Length: 7690 Lines: 151 Language Imperialism? Most Definitely... I'm afraid I am with Kathleen on this one. I have serious reservations about SEE as a pedagogical tool. I see the reasoning vis-a-vis sending a 'precise' version of English 'through the air'; but this is a hearing solution to a Deaf 'problem'. Can SEE encode intonation and emphatic stress? Can SEE make pragmatic meaning clear, when it is different from the surface meaning (e.g sarcasm)? I doubt it. This situation, as Kathleen points out, is entirely analogous to the majority of 'bilingual' education settings in the world where the language of the minority is suppressed and the majority language (of which the students often have only a partial knowledge) is used as the medium of instruction. In fact, if we take a sociolinguistic (rather than medical) view of deafness - and there are, of course, many sound justifications for doing so - the current situation in mainstream Deaf education in many countries around the world is in violation of several articles of the International Declaration of Linguistic Human Rights (in relation to linguistic minorities). And even if SEE could adequately represent the English language, what an incredibly slow, heavy handed and cumbersome way of communicating with the students! Think of how much more could be achieved through (e.g.)a discussion of how a text encodes meaning (in English, for example) in Sign - a multi-layered NATURAL human language. Why teach an 'intermediary' language on the way to English?! Why not make DIRECT links between Sign and text? Pycholinguistic research is showing that deaf people can develop an understanding of the phonology of English (or whatever) THROUGH PRINT. This is a very different route to reading when compared with hearing children, of course, but makes complete sense when you think of the Deaf mind and how their L1 must be represented. An internal system of phonemic contrasts (despite the grapheme-phoneme mismatch 'problem') thus develops AS A RESULT OF exposure to print in meaningful contexts, and not as a precursor to rewarding experiences of English through text. While linguistics does not yet have the tools to explain how linear, sequential English-as-text can be adequately encoded via only manual representations (given what are clearly major syntactic (etc.) differences), it is becoming clear that Deaf children and adults can and do make these links, given the appropriately supportive environment, without recourse to an artificial stepping-stone representational system. I have read much about Deaf children as young as three or four years old who make their own links to text (without adult intervention), and of native signing teachers who also make links between new words/concepts, their sign equivalents, the fingerspelled version, etc., as and when these items are presented in class. If Deaf education were not so entirely dominated by the hearing community, maybe such pedagogies would be mainstream, and maybe these children would be reading at the national average - not the national average for deaf children, but at the age-appropriate level for ANY child (barring cognitive impairments, of course). And with literacy levels equalling those of their hearing peers, deaf students truly would have a chance of fuller participation in the 'oral world'. Steve Kirk. On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, John Nissen wrote: > Hi Kathleen, > > Language imperialism? Surely not. You are treating deaf people as > if they were a different race! If deaf people want to participate > in the oral world, SEE is a boon. It's much easier than lip reading. > And it can be a major step towards learning the written language, > which is an encoding of the phonemes signed in SEE. > > BTW, we are planning to add signs to WordAloud - both BSL (the British > version of sign language) and signed speech are relevant. Even > without these, WordAloud is a useful aid for reading and learning to > read, whatever the nature of the reading difficulty. > See www.wordaloud.co.uk for a free evaluation copy. > > Regards, > > John > -- > In message <2d.144639b1.292978b0@aol.com> nifl-ld@nifl.gov writes: > > >Steve: > >I found some information on teaching reading and writing to the deaf as a > >second language, which I think is a shorthand way of describing what happens > >when deaf ways of cognition and language use are understood and worked with > >rather than against in curriculum and instruction, at various deaf websites I > >found by using a search engine. I looked at the websites that deaf > >themselves had created, including those of their associations and groups. > > > >Deaf are the only people who are not allowed to develop their own languages > >spontaneously and historically. But of course, deaf do so anyway. Who are > >we to tell them what language they must speak? Most deaf do want to know how > >to communicate and function in the hearing world, hence the notion of > >learning to read and write in English. > > > >But why teach Signed Exact English, an artificial language created by hearing > >people, to deaf to communicate with other deaf people? Is this not the most > >egregious example of language imperialism possible? To teach a sign language > >that does not mirror deaf cognition, but instead mirrors that of hearing > >people? > > > >It reminds me of the Indian boarding schools, where children were removed > >from their own cultures to not just learn the white man's language and body > >of 'knowledge' but to actually eradicate non-white ways of thinking. > > > >Kathleen Bombach > > > >--part1_2d.144639b1.292978b0_boundary > >Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" > >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > > ><HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">Steve:<BR> > >I found some information on teaching reading and writing to the deaf as a second language, which I think is a shorthand way of describing what happens when deaf ways of cognition and language use are understood and worked with rather than against in cur > r > i > >culum and instruction, at various deaf websites I found by using a search engine. I looked at the websites that deaf themselves had created, including those of their associations and groups.<BR> > ><BR> > >Deaf are the only people who are not allowed to develop their own languages spontaneously and historically. But of course, deaf do so anyway. Who are we to tell them what language they must speak? Most deaf do want to know how to commu > n > i > >cate and function in the hearing world, hence the notion of learning to read and write in English. <BR> > ><BR> > >But why teach Signed Exact English, an artificial language created by hearing people, to deaf to communicate with other deaf people? Is this not the most egregious example of language imperialism possible? To teach a sign language that does > n > o > >t mirror deaf cognition, but instead mirrors that of hearing people?<BR> > ><BR> > >It reminds me of the Indian boarding schools, where children were removed from their own cultures to not just learn the white man's language and body of 'knowledge' but to actually eradicate non-white ways of thinking.<BR> > ><BR> > >Kathleen Bombach</FONT></HTML> > > > >--part1_2d.144639b1.292978b0_boundary-- > > > > -- > Access the word, access the world! -- Try our WordAloud software!! > > John Nissen, Cloudworld Ltd., Chiswick, London, UK > Tel: +44 (0) 845 458 3944 (local rate in the UK) > Fax: +44 (0) 20 8742 8715 > Email: jn@cloudworld.co.uk > Web: http://www.cloudworld.co.uk and http://www.wordaloud.co.uk >
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