Bilingualism and Identity in Deaf Communities

The Development of Sociolinguistic Meanings:The Worldview of a Deaf Child within His Home Environment

219 1. All names in this document are pseudonyms. Sara and Mark Camillo are the hearing parents of Daniel (6-year-old, hearing), Henry (4-year-old, deaf), Madeline (2-year-old, hearing), Mary (1-year-old, hearing), Luke (1-year-old, hearing), and John (1-year-old, hearing). 2. This work stems from a larger, ethnographic project conducted at Gallaudet University entitled “Language, Literacy, and Cultural Development in Bilingual Homes and Classrooms.” The project involved, in part, my gathering in-depth information about the Camillo family through participant observation (Spradley 1979) and ethnographic interviews (Spradley 1980). These qualitative data collection methods are ethnographic methods of studying and describing cultural phenomena. From May 1996 to July 1997 I was “in the field” documenting and The Development of Sociolinguistic Meanings: The Worldview of a Deaf Child within His Home Environment Laura A. Blackburn Henry Camillo is one of the 92 percent of deaf children raised by hearing family members—his parents are hearing, as well as his five siblings and all of his extended family members (e.g., aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents).1 Researchers have raised scientific questions and conducted lively discussions regarding the choices of communication modality that hearing family members make for their deaf child (Schwartz 1996; Stewart and Luetke-Stahlman 1998). Henry’s life experiences are at the core of these debates because he uses American Sign Language (ASL) as his primary language of communication, whereas all of his family members use spoken English. This chapter presents Henry’s unique worldview, as well as detailed descriptions of his interactions with his immediate and extended family members during a ten-month period. The stories represent a sliver of the discoveries that are detailed in my dissertation research (Blackburn 1999).2 220 : l a u r a b l a c k b u r n learning about the Camillos’ lives. For ten months of that period (October 1996 to July 1997), I lived in the family’s home as a researcher. I wish to thank the LLCD project director, Dr. Carol J. Erting, as well as my other dissertation committee members (Dr. Barbara Bodner-Johnson, Dr. Jan Hafer, Dr. Jeff Lewis, and Dr. John Caughey), and LLCD team members Ms. Carlene Thumann-Prezioso (who also served as my peer debriefer) and Dr. Charles Reilly for their persistent and unequivocal support throughout the course of my dissertation experience. At the time of the investigation, Henry attended a day school for deaf children , located in the eastern United States. Henry, who is the only deaf member of the Camillo family, was four years old at the time of this investigation . This work also addresses the fact that Henry views the world in primarily visual ways and explores how he adapts to and lives productively in a home environment that is structured for individuals with an auditory orientation. The central research questions that guided this investigation were: How do a deaf child and his hearing family members make sense of each other’s worldviews? and How are their perspectives demonstrated in their actions? Therefore the investigation attempted to understand how family members socially and linguistically construct their knowledge and understandings of deafness among themselves and with others. The story told in professional literature about deaf children and their families often begins with the reality that children who are deaf are most often born into families that possess a hearing identity or an auditorily oriented worldview (Erting 1982, 1994a; Padden and Humphries 1988). Often, hearing parents, siblings, and extended family members of a deaf child have never met or interacted with another individual who is deaf (Garretson 1994; Meadow-Orlans 1990). Padden and Humphries (1988) observed this circumstance and assert that hearing parents possess an auditory (hearing) perspective that can interfere with their ability to understand how their deaf child makes sense of their environment (i.e., visually). Their intrinsically auditory orientation and use of a spoken language are coupled with extensive contacts with members of their social support system , most often composed of hearing educators and professionals, medical experts, and family. Padden and Humphries suggest that the ongoing, prevalent nature of these hearing sociolinguistic interactions may prohibit parents from moving toward “a different [or visual] center” when interacting with their child (1988, 39). In other words, hearing family mem- The Worldview of a Deaf Child within His Home Environment : 221 bers create their own realities by living their...