Literacy and Deaf People: Cultural and Contextual Perspectives

English Literacy in the Life Stories of Deaf College Undergraduates

NOTES 1. See Baker & Cokely (1980), Padden & Humphries (1988), Woodward (1989), Wilcox (1989a, 1989b), and Wilcox & Wilcox (1991) for further discussion of the pathological and cultural views of deafness. 2. Following the commonly accepted convention proposed by Woodward (1972), I use the lowercase deaf to refer to the condition of not being able to hear and uppercase Deaf to refer to a group of people who share the same language, ASL, and culture. 3. This poem was originally conceived in American Sign Language; the text presented here is a transcription by the author of an English translation from the videotape, “American Culture: The Deaf Perspective (Literature ),” produced by Susan D. Rutherford for the San Francisco Public Library, 1984. 4. All poems with the exception of Lentz (see n. 3) appear in Gannon (1981). 5. See Baker & Cokely (1980) and Wilcox & Wilcox (1991) for further discussion of signed English and ASL. 6. ASL words are glossed as small capitalized English words; fingerspelled letters are given in all small capitals with the letters in fingerspelled words separated by hyphens; English words and English translations are given in double quotes. 7. The implications of BoMee’s sociolinguistic competence are profound . Not only does BoMee recognize others’ preferred language and level of competence; she also adjusts her language accordingly. Hearing teachers and diagnosticians frequently are not proficient signers. BoMee recognizes this and adapts. This presents a dilemma: how is it possible for these professionals to know whether they are observing BoMee’s language proficiency or a reflection of their own? 8. See Liddell (1984), Liddell & Johnson (1989), Padden & Perlmutter (1987), and Wilbur (1987) for further discussion of ASL phonology. 9. As a matter of fact, substituting the A for the open-A handshape (e.g., in the ASL classifier for upright objects) is a mispronunciation common among adult, hearing signers. 10. This confirms the reports of Deaf persons that deafness has little to do with their sense of identity; a more appropriate description, according to Bahan (1989d), would be “seeing persons.” See also Mather (1989) for an ethnographic description of how one teacher—a Deaf, Struggling for a Voice: An Interactionist View of Language 187 native signer of ASL—used visually oriented strategies to help deaf children acquire communicative competence. 11. A proposal for such an ASL orthography is given in McIntire et al. (1987). REFERENCES Akamatsu, C. T. 1985. “Fingerspelling formulae: A word is more or less than the sum of its letters.” In W. Stokoe & V. Volterra (eds.), SLR ‘83: Sign Language Research. Silver Spring, MD: Linstok Press. Bahan, B. 1989a. “Total communication: A total farce.” In S. Wilcox (ed.), American Deaf culture. Silver Spring, MD: Linstok Press. Bahan, B. 1989b. “It’s our world too!” In S. Wilcox (ed.), American Deaf culture. Silver Spring, MD: Linstok Press. Bahan, B. 1989c. “What if . . . Alexander Graham Bell had gotten his way?” In S. Wilcox (ed.), American Deaf culture. Silver Spring, MD: Linstok Press. Bahan, B. 1989d. “Notes from a ‘seeing’ person.” In S. Wilcox (ed.), American Deaf culture. Silver Spring, MD: Linstok Press. Baker, C., & D. Cokely. 1980. American Sign Language: A teacher’s resource text on grammar and culture. Silver Spring, MD: T. J. Publishers. Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. The dialogic imagination. (Edited by M. Holquist, translated by C. Emerson & M. Holquist.) Austin: University of Texas Press. Bell, A. G. 1883. Upon the formation of a deaf variety of the human race. New Haven, CT: National Academy of Sciences. Berko-Gleason, J. 1985. The development of language. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill. Bruner, J. 1983. Child’s talk: Learning to use language. New York: W. W. Norton. Carrington, L. D. 1981. A seminar on orthography for St. Lucian Creole, January 29–31. In Language and development: The St. Lucian context . Castries, St. Lucia: Folk Research Centre and Caribbean Research Centre. Coulmas, F. 1989. The writing systems of the world. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Cruttendon, A. 1986. Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cummins, J. 1986. Empowering minority students: A framework for intervention. Harvard Education Review, 56(l), 18–36. 188 Sherman Wilcox Dewey, J. 1916. Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan. (1966 Free Press paperback edition). Eastman, G. 1983. Sign me Alice II. Washington, DC: Gallaudet College Press. Elsasser, N., & P. Irvine. 1985. English and Creole: The dialectics of choice in a college writing program. Harvard Educational Review, 55(4), 399–415. Elsasser, N., & V. John-Steiner. 1977. An interactionist approach to advancing literacy. Harvard Educational Review...