Multilingualism and Sign Languages: From the Great Plains to Australia

Establishing and Maintaining Sight Triangles: Conversations between Deaf Parents and Hearing Toddlers in Puerto Rico

Establishing and Maintaining Sight Triangles : 159 Establishing and Maintaining Sight Triangles: Conversations between Deaf Parents and Hearing Toddlers in Puerto Rico Susan Mather, Yolanda Rodriguez-Fraticelli, Jean F. Andrews, and Juanita Rodriguez An unexplored area of child language research is the study of hearing toddlers of Deaf parents. These children of Deaf adults, or Codas, represent a unique population in which to study parent-child discourse. Although Codas do not share their parents’ hearing loss, they inherit their parents’ linguistic and cultural heritage (Preston 1994; Singleton and Tittle 2000; Bishop and Hicks 2005). They are raised bilingually, bimodally, and biculturally, using a signed language and a spoken language . Depending on the family background and interests, these children are typically acculturated into both worlds — Deaf and hearing. This study examined the communication between two hearing toddlers and their Deaf or Coda parents as the toddlers were learning Puerto Rican Sign Language (PRSL) and spoken Spanish at home. When those children eventually go to school, they will learn to read and write Spanish and English (Rodriguez 1993). The toddlers’ extended families are composed of many Deaf aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. The toddler Codas in this study also attended various Deaf community functions where they socialized not only with other Deaf adults and Deaf children but also with other hearing adults and children whose parents are Deaf. Three research questions were asked to assess the communication patterns of the four parents (three are Deaf and one is a hearing Coda) as This study was funded under U.S. Department of Education grant number H325E980050, Training Doctoral Level Leaders in Deaf Education, Jean F. Andrews, Ph.D., Project Director. they interacted with their hearing toddlers during activities such as eating , reading a book, and playing with a toy. 1. How does the parent prepare the child before each activity and use a certain object to set up a conversation with the child? 2. How does the parent begin and maintain conversation before, during , and after each type of activity? 3. How does the parent use turn-taking in such conversations? AN OVERVIEW OF KEY COMMUNICATION FACTORS The research that has explored various aspects of bilingual and bimodal communication in children has provided a starting point from which to proceed with our investigations. In addition, the investigations into various factors that may affect discourse, including adult communication patterns, cultural influences, gender, and age provide insights and help to frame our work. The Bilingual and BimodalToddler Toddlers, young children between eighteen months and three years, develop multiple ways of communicating with their parents, particularly if they have Deaf parents. Concerns have been raised that because Deaf parents use signed language instead of spoken native language as a primary mode of communication with hearing children, the hearing children are stymied in language development. On the contrary, hearing children of Deaf parents actually learn two languages. They learn a signed language from their Deaf parents and a spoken language from hearing relatives, peers, and teachers. Furthermore, they learn their languages on similar timetables as other bilingual children who learn two spoken languages. These children are bilingual in sign and English as well as bimodal in that they use the visual-gestural and auditory-vocal channels to acquire language (Griffith 1985; Jones 1976; Petitto 2000; Prinz and Prinz 1979; Schlesinger and Meadow 1972). Such children offer the field of child language tantalizing evidence that goes against historical psycholinguistic theories of the primacy of speech in the acquisition of language — not only traditional ideas that maintain the idea that the learning of signed language interferes with the acquisition of speech (Wilbur 2000) 160 : mather, rodriguez-fraticelli, andrews, and rodriguez Establishing and Maintaining Sight Triangles : 161 but also myths about the negative impact of bilingualism for children (Baker 2001). CHILD-LANGUAGE PRAGMATICS Child-language pragmatics is the study of how children use language in communication. It focuses on conversations beyond the word or sentence levels (Austin 1962; Grice 1975; Searle 1965). This field is concerned with how parents initiate, maintain, and end a conversation with children. It examines communication behaviors such as turn-taking, cooperation, checking for comprehension, changing topics, or clearing up misunderstandings (Crystal 1997). One focus in particular is on how the caregiver-child dyad lays the foundation for language learning by beginning the communication process. Children learn how to communicate their needs, wants and intentions by modeling their parents and engaging in reciprocal...