Conteúdo

Introduction......................................................................................................................................3

Deafness and Sign Language...........................................................................................................4

Deafness...........................................................................................................................................4

Sign languages.................................................................................................................................4

Types of Sign Languages.................................................................................................................5

Differences and Similarities between Sing and Spoken Languages................................................6

Differences between Signed and Spoken Languages......................................................................6

Iconicity and Arbitrariness..............................................................................................................6

Simultaneous and Sequential Structure. .........................................................................................7

Similarities between Signed and Spoken Languages......................................................................7

The Acquisition of Linguistic Competence in Sign Language........................................................8

Deaf Children with Deaf Parents.....................................................................................................9

Deaf children of hearing parents......................................................................................................9

Teaching Deaf People....................................................................................................................10

Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12

Bibliography..................................................................................................................................13
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Introduction
All over the world there are deaf people. Some of these people are born deaf, and some become
deaf as a result of childhood illnesses, accidents or other traumas. Some children are deaf
because there is an inherited type of deafness in their family, but these make up a very small
number of the total of deaf people in the world. There are also many people who begin to lose
their hearing as they become old. Since the human being interacts by using communication
system either spoken or sign, there is a great necessity to maintain the interaction among deaf
people.

In this essay, the group discusses, in detailed way, deafness and sign language as well as
different strategies that can be used when teaching language to deaf people.

The group had to discuss different perspectives, according to different authors, about the topic at
the end the conclusion was brought.

In the last paper, the group listed down the sources which were used to develop this essay, order
to allow the reader to accomplish the studies.
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1. Deafness and Sign Language

1.1. Deafness
CARROLL (2008: 431) states that Deafness is an aphasia in which a person is unable to
comprehend language in the auditory modality. Comprehension of visual language and
production in both modalities are normal.
In the same line of thinking, HEPALIA, in the article “Sign Language in Communication”, sees
the expression Deafness as a term used to cover the whole range of hearing loss.

The group agrees that deafness is partial or complete hearing loss because The RNID (Royal
National Institute for Deaf people) uses the term to cover people who are:

 D/deaf;
 Partially deaf;
 Partially hearing;
 Deafened;
 deaf/blind and
 Hard of hearing
Hearing loss may be caused by a number of factors, including: genetics, ageing, exposure to
noise, some infections, birth complications, trauma to the ear, and certain medications or toxins.

1.2. Sign languages

As the name suggests sign languages are languages that do not have words. They are produced
by using positions and movements of the hands, face and body.
CARROL (2008:27) increases that “signs are expressed in visual or spatial form”.
Therefore, sign languages depend on space and position in space. They are real languages since
they can be used to express everything that spoken languages express, and they have their own
grammar.
Alike any other language, sign languages have to be acquired learned in order to be performed
perfectly.

Sign languages are the natural languages of deaf people. They are the languages deaf people use
when they communicate with one another.
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As example of a sign language the group will have a brief look at American Sign Language.
American Signal Language is a complete, complex language that employs signs made by moving
the hands combined with facial expressions and postures of the body. It is the primary language
of many North Americans who are deaf and is one of several communication options used by
people who are deaf.
American Sign Language is sharply distinguished from manual forms of English that translate
English sounds into signs. The best known is fingerspelling, which, as the name implies,
translates English words letter by letter into manual form. It is a secondary gestural system,
derived from the English language. In contrast, ASL is independent of English and derived from
French Sign Language. Although America and British share the same language which is English
they do not share the same sign language. It means that the sign languages do not depend on the
languages spoken in the country, thus each country have they own sign language regardless the
spoken language they use.

1.2.1. Types of Sign Languages

There are many types of sign language and some of the, are:
 Sign language for the deaf;
 Sign language for people who are deaf and blind;
 Sign language for children and adults with special needs;
 Sign language for babies - a most fabulous way to understand and communicate with
hearing baby, before he or she can speak;
 Sign language for communicating with animals for example dogs and dolphins;
 Home sign which is not a full language, but it is used for a particular family, where a deaf
child does not have contact with other deaf children and is not educated in sign;
 A village sign language which is a local language used both by the deaf and by a
significant portion of the hearing community, who have deaf family and friends.

1.3. Differences and Similarities between Sing and Spoken Languages

Language is traditionally defined as a method by which humans communicate with one another.
While verbal communication or spoken is the most common type of language currently used by
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individuals living around the world, facial expressions, hand gestures, and body language can
considerably contribute to overall interaction and communication.

There are both similarities in these two types of languages and differences between them.

1.3.1. Differences between Signed and Spoken Languages

The sign and spoken languages are difference in many levels once their realization a total and
absolutely different.
FERNÁNDEZ & CAIRNS (2010:4) underline that “what differs between signed and spoken
languages is the transmission mode: gestural for the former and articulatory-phonetic (speech)
for the latter.”

By the other side, CARROLL (2008:27) says that the sign and spoken languages vary in terms of
“iconicity and arbitrariness, simultaneous and sequential structure”

1.3.1.1. Iconicity and Arbitrariness

In English, as with most spoken languages, the principle of arbitrariness holds: No intrinsic
relationship exists between the set of sounds and the object to which the sounds refer.
For instance, there is no relation between the size of a word and the size of its referent; we have
big words for small objects (for example, caterpillar) and small words for big objects (for
example, ship).
According to HOCKETT (1966), cited by HAPALIYA in “Sign Language in Communication”,
this is a universal feature of human language. American Sign Language, in contrast, possesses a
high degree of iconicity: Many of the signs resemble the objects or activities to which they refer.
For example:
a) The sign for attention is to hold both hands parallel to one another in front of one’s face and
then move them away from one’s body. This suggests the act of putting on blinders to keep
out distractions.
b) Another iconic sign is the sign for judge, which is to place one’s hands in front of one’s body
and then repeatedly move one up as the other goes down. This resembles a balancing scale
that weighs various thoughts (KLIMA & BELLUGI, 1979 cited by HAPALIYA in “Sign
Language in Communication”).
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1.3.1.2. Simultaneous and Sequential Structure. .

The structure of spoken languages is largely sequential in nature. We have rules that specify the
correct order of phonemes within syllables, syllables within words, and words within sentences.
Sign language differs in that it is organized spatially more than temporally. The meaning of
utterances is not specified primarily by the order of signs (although order does matter) but by the
combination of features simultaneously present in the sign.

1.3.2. Similarities between Signed and Spoken Languages

FERNÁNDEZ & CAIRNS (2010:4) stress that “Sign languages are just as structured as any
spoken language and are just as capable of conveying an unlimited range of topics.”
Sign languages also operate under principles distinct from thought and communication.

In the same view of similarities between sign and spoken language, CARROL (2008: 28) goes
further saying that both the sign and spoken languages possess morphology, reciprocity,
linguistic productivity and phrase structure.

a) Morphology- American Sign Language has a rich morphological system that signals various
grammatical distinctions. For instance, the distinction between first and second person is
marked on a sign such as ask. When the utterance is in the first person (ask me), the
movement of the sign is toward the signer, whereas when it is in the second person (ask
you), the movement is away from the signer and toward the addressee.
b) Reciprocity – deals with the distinction between they pinched them and they pinched each
other—that is, whether there is a subject that is the agent of the action and an object that is
its recipient or whether there is mutual interchange between subject and object. In English,
this distinction is made with pronouns. In ASL, there is a reciprocity morpheme on the verb
so that pinched each other is conveyed by movement back and forth across the signer’s
body. Again, in all of these instances the marking of these distinctions is sequential in
English and simultaneous in ASL.
c) Linguistic Productivity – The property of embedding one sign into another also occurs in
ASL shows the durational form of the sign, which means ‘‘to give on a continuous basis’’;
part c shows the exhaustive form, which means ‘‘to give to each.’’ It is then possible to
combine both of these meanings into a single
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d) Phrase Structure – As we have seen, English marks grammatical categories, such as subject
and verb, via word order. American Sign Language sometimes does this as well for example,
with transitive verbs (verbs that require a direct object, such as give, kiss, and tell), the order
in which the constituents are signed is subject-verb-object (SVO).

1.4. The Acquisition of Linguistic Competence in Sign Language

Sign languages are visual-spatial languages that have their own grammatical and linguistic
structure. Therefore, differently structured from spoken language, it is an independent language
which is passed down from one generation of deaf people to the next.

The grammar of sign language relies on space, hand-shape and movement; this language also has
non-manual components – facial expressions, body movements – that play an important
linguistic role in constructing visual-spatial utterances. On the whole, just as in spoken
languages, sign language, such as American Sign Language(ASL), is structured at syntactic,
morphological and phonological (Stokoe, 1960), cited by HAPALIYA in “Sign Language in
Communication” levels of analysis. It means that the acquisition of the sign is complete and
efficient when the deaf child has knowledge of all these language levels. Then, for the
acquisition to take place with efficiency, it will depend on how early and frequency the child is
exposed to the sign.

There a sort of difference in sign language acquisition between deaf children with deaf parents
and deaf children with hearing parents, as it discussed below.

1.4.1. Deaf Children with Deaf Parents

The deaf children of deaf parents learning sign language are systematic, regular, and productive
in their language just as are hearing children, that is, a deaf child’s linguistic progression through
stages is similar to that by hearing children learning spoken language.
It is said that the acquisition of sign language may be faster than that of spoken language: the age
of appearance of first signs occurs at least 2 to 3 months earlier than that of first words for both
deaf and hearing children exposed to sign language.
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McIntire (1977), cited by HAPALIYA in “Sign Language in Communication” reported that the
growth of sign language vocabulary also appears to be faster: a child had a vocabulary of more
than 85 signs at 13 months while hearing children exposed to spoken language at that age are just
acquiring their first words. This suggests that manual signs may emerge earlier because
neuromuscular development of the system used in signing occurs earlier than development of the
systems used for speaking.

1.4.2. Deaf children of hearing parents

The majority of hearing parents do not know both sign language and the community of deaf
people. This is why the deaf child of hearing parents is incompletely exposed to language input
until she or he arrives at preschool or school for the deaf where sign language is used as a means
of communication.
In spite of the lack of access to sign language input, deaf children devise linguistic systems of
their own based on spontaneous gestures called home signs.

GOLDIN-MEADOW & FELDMAN (1977), TOMASZEWKI in “Pycholinguistic language of

Communication”, showed home signers develop systematic means of communicating with
gesture, as well as gestural names for people, objects and actions; also, these children could
produce, first, one gesture at a time, and then combine gestures to create two-gesture utterances.
Further studies have demonstrated that deaf children’s home signs exhibit structure not only at
lexical and syntactic, but also morphological levels. However, researchers have discovered that
home signs alone are not sufficient to support the spontaneous generation of a signed language.

There are still different kinds of visual input to which deaf children might potentially be
exposed: home signs, or non-native signing. Hence, it would be interesting to look further into
gestural language emergence among home signers within their peer context, particularly, in the
case of symmetric situations where the home sign of one child could serve as a linguistic model
for another deaf child. This could provide new insights into the nature of visual language
development in home signers as joint precursors of linguistic constructs.
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1.5. Teaching Deaf People

There are some strategies that will make the communication with a deaf person clear and
meaningful. There are a number of strategies which can be used by teaching staff which will help
enormously, and there is an important role for tutors in educating other student members of
seminar groups, so that the simple tactics outlined below are used by everyone. To effectively
meet the communication needs of a deaf student in the context of higher education settings.

So, when teaching deaf people teachers should be in mind that:

a) Speech
 Speak clearly and at a reasonable pace. Try to keep the rhythm of your speech as natural
as possible. If in doubt ask the deaf student if the pace is right.
b) Visibility
 To be able to lipread the deaf student needs to be able to see the teachers face.
 When speaking make sure that your mouth is not covered in any way and ensure that you
face the person to whom you are speaking .Try to keep beards and moustaches trimmed;
do not cover your mouth with pens, cigarettes, coffee cups or hands while speaking.
 Try not to nod the head too much or speak while writing on the board or walking around
the room as this creates nearly impossible lipreading conditions.
c) Face:
 Try to maintain eye contact when talking to a deaf student one to one.
 Try to use expression in your face as well as gesture as this helps to convey the sense of
your words to a lip reader. Make use of natural gesture and facial expression as a clue to
meaning.
 Speak clearly; but avoid speaking artificially slowly, exaggerating your lips, or shouting
as this affects the natural rhythm of speech.
 Check comprehension; encourage and direct questions.
d) Position:
 The deaf person should be seated to best advantage. She or he will know where best to
sit. This will usually be a seat near the front, slightly to one side of the speaker (the
optimum distance for lip-reading is about 6 feet).
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 Allow the student to position themselves so that he/she can lip-read you easily and see
the projector or board and as much of the class as possible if there is to be a group
discussion.
e) Distractions:
 Try to keep light reflecting or bright jewellery to a minimum, and wear plain clothes.
Bright clothes, especially checks, stripes or dots can make concentration difficult.
f) Gaining Attention:
 The teacher must be aware that he needs to attract the deaf person's attention before
starting speaking.; firstly try to get into their line of sight, and if that is not effective
consider touching the person gently on the arm, bearing in mind it may startle them. It
may be useful to agree a “signal” with the student for when you are about to start. This
could be a wave of the hand at the student, flashing the lights on and off or, if necessary,
asking the person's neighbor to tap a shoulder or arm to alert him or her.
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Conclusion
From the discussion held by the group, mainly about differences and similarities between sign
and spoke languages, there was concluded that though sign language differs from spoken
language in linguistic features such as iconicity and morphological structure, there are more
similarities than differences in the early stages of acquisition of sign and spoken languages. The
primary difference is that infants acquire their first signs two to three months earlier than infants
typically acquire their first words.

All in all, as the theory of Nativity suggests, all children will demonstrate the similar process in
the language acquisition, as it is biological, no matter if it spoken or sign language.

And focusing on deaf people, the group concluded that deaf students will need more time to
assimilate the new language of their subjects - limited access to the spoken language around
them inhibits the assimilation of vocabulary and forms of expression. Also the auditory memory
is likely to be less useful for them than for other students as an aid to study - it is thought that this
aspect, vocabulary assimilation, and the lack of personal voice when reading, can significantly
affect reading fluency. For some, written expression may be affected by deafness.
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Bibliography
CARROLL, D. W. (2008). Psychology of Language. 5th edition. Thomson Wadsworth, USA.

FERNÁNDEZ, E.M. & CAIRNS, H. S. (2010). Fundamentals of Psycholinguistics. Blackwell

Publishing. UK.

An Article about Pycholinguistic language of Communication. TOMASZEWKI, P. Vol. 5. No.

1. 2011 Institute of the deaf.

An Article about Sign Language in Communication HAPALIYA, M. N. V.V.P. Engineering

College.