Literacy and Deaf People: Cultural and Contextual Perspectives

What Does Culture Have to Do with the Education of Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing?

A study done at the Research Program in Language and Literacy at the University of California, San Diego, looked at language use in Deaf and hearing teachers during “teacher talk” in real instruction time (Humphries and MacDougall 2000). This study also looked at language use across two types of school settings, a residential school with a bi-bi philosophy and a public school day program with a total communication philosophy. It attempted to understand how teachers make connections between English and ASL in natural ways during instruction. Seven ASL-fluent elementary and middle school teachers were videotaped during instruction. Samples from the many hours of taping were analyzed focusing on teacher talk. Among other things, this study looked at the frequency of possible connectors between English and ASL: fingerspelling use, initialized sign use, and use of a technique or language feature we called “chaining.” The study found that Deaf and hearing teachers use initialized signs with roughly the same frequency. However, we observed that the type of initialized signs used were different for Deaf and hearing teachers. We observed a greater use among hearing teachers of “new” initialized signs similar to those found in signed English systems. But we were unable to pursue this to a conclusion because of the difficulty in determining what is distinguishable and countable as a lexicalized sign that has a handshape that looks like a fingerspelled letter and those derived from signed English systems. (Native signers agree that FAMILY in ASL is an ASL sign but could not agree that CURRICULUM is an ASL sign. Some suggested it was; others suggested it was a SEE sign.) But this study found that Deaf teachers fingerspelled twice as often as hearing teachers. In the sample segments (six fifteen-minute segments per teacher), Deaf teachers fingerspelled an average of 176 times, hearing teachers an average of 75 times. When analyzed according to school setting , residential school bi-bi teachers fingerspelled an average of 152 times and public school Total Communication teachers an average of 74 times. It is clear in our samples that Deaf teachers make frequent use of fingerspelling in making connections between ASL and English. It is also evident that school setting (and presumably, program philosophy) had an effect on the frequency of fingerspelling by teachers since native signers and Deaf teachers where distributed across both types of settings. An examination of teachers’ use of a process that we had noted in an earlier study and called “chaining” yielded differences as well. Chaining is a procedure for connecting texts such as signed, printed, written, or 42 Tom Humphries fingerspelled words. In this procedure, a teacher might, for example, fingerspell a word, immediately point to the word printed on the blackboard next to her, and fingerspell the word again. Or, the teacher may sign a word and immediately fingerspell it as well. Often the chains have two or three parts, and sometimes, four or more parts. This procedure seems to be a process for emphasizing, highlighting, objectifying, and generally calling attention to equivalencies between languages. There are several possible combinations of links in chains of this type. The following are some examples of chaining: (THEORY) (T-H-E-O-R-Y) (THEORY) initialized sign + fingerspelling + initialized sign (H-O-N-O-R) (HONOR) (H-O-N-O-R) fingerspelling + initialized sign + fingerspelling (duty) (point) (DUTY) (D-U-T-Y) (DUTY) printed word + pointing to word + initialized sign + fingerspelling + initialized sign (grubs) (G-R-U-B-S) (point) printed word + fingerspelling + pointing to word (poem) (P-O-E-M) (point) (P-O-E-M) printed word + fingerspelling + pointing to word + fingerspelling In our samples, Deaf teachers used chaining with great frequency, hearing teachers much less. Deaf teachers used chaining an average of 30 times, hearing teachers an average of 5.5 times. There was a noticeable difference across school setting as well, with those teachers in the bi-bi program using chaining an average of 21.5 times and Total Communication teachers using chaining an average of 8.7 times. What does all this mean? Why does language use in instruction appear different for Deaf and hearing teachers? What is the relationship between language use and ideology of the school? How can we account for the differences in Deaf and hearing teachers’ use of fingerspelling and chaining according to the school setting in which they teach? The greater use of fingerspelling by Deaf teachers in this study suggests that these teachers are engaged in a practice that provides...