Language Deprivation

Pre-print. Septiembre 2020
(Versión reducida de la versión en inglés: “Sign Bilingualism or Language Deprivation”).

Resumen
En este trabajo damos cuenta de los resultados de la investigación etnográfica realizada en la zona de Barcelona, durante el curso 2018-19, sobre la situación de la educación sorda, a raíz de las continuas quejas de las asociaciones de familias de hijos sordos y de jóvenes sordos signantes sobre la falta de respuesta de la administración educativa catalana a sus demandas. El análisis cualitativo de los datos recogidos muestra la existencia de privación lingüística en algunos niños y jóvenes, un conflicto abierto entre las familias y los profesionales de la sanidad y logopedas, y el grave deterioro del servicio de interpretación. Ello nos lleva a intentar explicar las razones de este conflicto en el marco del contexto de un modelo bilingüe intermodal que se inició a principios del siglo XXI, pero que se ha ido deteriorando poco a poco a pesar del reconocimiento legal de la lengua de signos.

Palabras clave:
Privación lingüística, semilingüismo, bilingüismo intermodal, bilingüismo en lengua de signos y lengua oral, educación sorda, oralismo, planificación lingüística.

The main issue addressed in this paper is practical application of signed language in early development support for deaf and hard of hearing children in Poland. This discussion is set in a broad cultural, linguistic, psychological and rehabilitation context: from setting out how the perception (paradigm) of deafness has changed in our society to a discussion of the developmental consequences of late exposure to language. This paper presents the concept of Mary Pat Moeller which includes four approaches to the use of sign language in the programming of language in DHH: the foundational use, the transitional use, the differentiated (strategic) use and the dominant use. The discussion about a possibility for Polish rehabilitation centres to adopt these solutions required explanation of the differences between auditory deprivation and language deprivation which is another important issue addressed in this paper. The main aim of this publication is to propose a flexible approach to the creation of a model of education for deaf and hard of hearing children, one that will completely fulfill the needs of a specific child (and not the expectations of the social majority) and to substantially argue about the conviction that sign language is a factor potentially detrimental to the development of these children.

This paper reports on the results of ethnographic research carried out in the Barcelona area (in 2018-19), on the situation of deaf education as a result of the continuous complaints from the families of deaf bilingual pupils about the Catalan educational administration's failure to respond to their demands. The data were collected during a recreational activity for deaf children, and consist of participant observation and field notes on the children's interactions, and recorded interviews with the families and other deaf adults. The qualitative analysis of these data shows the existence of children's and young people's language deprivation, and an ongoing conflict between families, and health professionals and speech therapists. A second part involving the data triangulation is added: the analysis of an interview with the representatives of educational interpreters, the official document that regulates this service in post-compulsory studies, and the legal framework for bimodal bilingualism. This leads us to an explanation for the reasons for this conflict within the context of a bimodal bilingual model which began at the turn of the twenty-first century, but has gradually deteriorated, despite the legal recognition of sign language.
Keywords: Language deprivation, semilingualism, bimodal bilingualism, sign bilingualism, deaf education, Catalan deaf education, oralism, sign language planning.

Traditionally, language deprivation was associated with extreme social situations in which very specific individuals lived their childhood disconnected from social life (the so-called "wild children"), and they could not develop a first language spontaneously, in relationship with a social group. However, in recent decades, the phenomenon has begun to appear in deaf children and adolescents, because of the proliferation of hearing implants and hearing aids, and the tendency to deprive these subjects of the natural development of sign language in the first years of life. Following this observation, research has also begun on this deprivation and its psychosocial, cognitive and cognitive consequences for these subjects. This paper reviews these studies and contextualizes the phenomenon in Spain.

En aquest article argumentem que el factor principal de variació lingüística en la població amb sordesa prelocutiva és el tipus d’intervenció exclusivament oral que es realitza majoritàriament en l’actualitat. El fet de no exposar els infants sords a una llengua de signes a més d’una llengua oral des del moment del diagnòstic de la sordesa els posa en risc de privació lingüística i, en conseqüència, d’alteracions lingüístiques, cognitives,
socioemocionals i de salut mental. A més, el trastorn del llenguatge associat a la privació lingüística dificulta el diagnòstic de possibles trastorns del desenvolupament del llenguatge. A partir de la descripció de les dues variables principals que són font de la variació de perfils lingüístics en la població amb sordesa, les modalitats lingüístiques que empren i la presència o absència de trastorns del llenguatge, analitzem els factors que
influeixen en aquesta variació lingüística. Finalment, proposem algunes mesures per fer possible una atenció primerenca que inclogui l’exposició a una llengua de signes: la revisió de la formació dels professionals que acompanyen les famílies de nens sords en la presa de decisions sobre la intervenció amb l’infant i la creació d’entorns signants per assegurar la immersió lingüística en la llengua de signes del territori.

During an evening lull at the Association of College Educators – Deaf and Hard of Hearing conference, I walked to the shore. Chicago lay behind me, glittering in swank neon. Lake Michigan yawned in front where bare lights limned icy black water. Intuition links this imagery to the book under my arm: Glickman and Hall’s (2019) Language Deprivation and Deaf Mental Health. In it, the light of language is contrasted with an abyss without; to paraphrase Sartre, being or nothingness. This imagery skims the surface of Language Deprivation Syndrome’s (LDS) complexity. To understand this vexing issue in depth, the editors assemble experts who aim to construct an initial clinical description. Psychologists, linguists, interpreters, and program directors are joined by a historian, a lawyer, and a psychiatrist; in spite of interdisciplinarity, themes readily emerge.
LDS is a biosocial concatenation; social in etiology and bodily inscribed in maladapted neurology. LDS has diverse, idiosyncratic manifestations. It disenfranchises deaf people. Deafness and LDS overlap but are not identical. While deaf LDS is far too common, it is also preventable. LDS exists on a spectrum: Language deficits (mild) are common. Atypical language development or dysfluency (moderate) is overrepresented in deaf populations. Finally, some deaf adults are functionally alingual (severe). Absent language, these individuals lead a “dysphoric mode of existence” (Gulati, p. 36). Those affected incur unique experiential trajectories. They may undergo trauma, have comorbid disabilities, or knowledge gaps. LDS is contrasted with speech-and-language disorders, learning and intellectual disabilities, autism, aphasia, and surdophrenia. LDS often erodes deaf mental health, and mental illness is worsened by it.
For clinicians, the book is successful. It is exactingly described, richly illustrated, and rife with heart-rending examples, often set in jails, courtrooms, and institutions. Using positivist epistemology, the authors diagnose the pathology of LDS, empirically measure its outward effects, and suggest means to assuage its gravest aspects. The most impactful work characterizes LDS’ boundary-transgressing complexity and acknowledges its infuriating injustice. Here, LDS is created by inequities of socioeconomics, ineffectual governance, unethical
biases against sign languages, and bioeconomic exploitation by industry. These writers locate the problem in the system, not in the child. Insofar as the book is taken as a starting point, it is successful; however, the book’s critical shortcoming is that it does not go far enough to deracinate LDS via education.
As a critical deaf pedagogue, I am an interloper here. While the book is not explicitly for deaf educators, they are certainly in its target audience and, like clinicians, intimately involved in deaf language development. It is problematic that educators’ contributions are underrepresented. As a result, the text lacks both, a cogent theoretical framework for pedagogy and evidence- based practices linked to achievable scholastic progress. Deaf pedagogy researchers may use the text as a stepping stone to segue from LDS to research on deaf visuality, bilingualism, translanguaging, and multimodality—educational themes that appear without integration. To this end, future studies may ask: How does LDS shape cognitive development? What role does socioemotional dysregulation play in scholastic develop- ment? What teaching methods reduce the harm done to deaf LDS children? What strategies exist for Individualized Education Plans?
Glickman and Hall comprehensively describe LDS as a problem. However, doing so underscores a regrettable theme— LDS scholarship is reaction—damage control. LDS thrives in the absence of education. Via concerted efforts, educators along with researchers, ethicists, and activists should build on this important work to construct strategies that eradicate the present epidemic’s sources and prevent future cases. Deaf educators are essential to this work. Building on Pollard’s (p. 121-1) imaginative analogy, LDS is a radical evolutionary divergence. Conceptualizing life without language is like envisioning life without carbon, or absent gravity. From this standpoint, the most dynamic explorations of this emergent field are yet to come.

Michael E. Skyer Senior Lecturer National Technical Institute for the Deaf

Designing inclusive education for deaf learners is a complex dilemma affecting multiple spheres and agents. In the US and Canada, despite considerable work by students, parents, educators, school administrators, curriculum developers, and lawmakers to address education policy about deaf bilingual literacy, the provision of deaf education is a wicked problem exacerbated by gaps in curriculum and pedagogy. Despite increasingly hypermodern technologies and mandated early assessment, most deaf high schoolers in North America have unsatisfactory literacy skills (Qi & Mitchell, 2012). To better manage this “wicked problem” involving policy, pedagogical methods, and curriculum design, we explore how aesthetic forms of knowledge and deaf positive design operations are used in conjunction with Open Educational Resources (OER). We reviewed the literature and constructed a novel framework about OER and e-books in deaf education. The synthesis generated three key takeaways that assisted our understanding of the complex issue. We presented our new framework alongside structured questions to 382 attendees hailing from 20 nations at the WUN/UNESCO Conference (2021, October), focused on inclusive and open access education technologies. We empirically analyzed this rich corpus using qualitative coding cycles and represented out findings using a multipart Ecocycle Model. Following basic analysis, we describe four broader implications for deaf education research about teaching and curriculum using OER and e-book materials. Our analysis shows that deaf curriculum design is an educational problem embedded in a larger policy debate concerning methods and philosophies of pedagogy.

The main issue addressed in this paper is a practical application of sign language in early development support for deaf and hard of hearing children in Poland. This discussion is set in a broad cultural, linguistic, psychological and rehabilitation context. This paper presents the concept of Mary Pat Moeller which includes four approaches to the use of sign language in the programming of language in DHH. The discussion on the possibility of Polish rehabilitation centres adopting these solutions required an explanation of the diff erences between auditory deprivation and language deprivation, which is another important issue addressed in this paper. The main aim of this publication is to propose a fl exible approach to the creation of a model of education for deaf and hard of hearing children, one that will completely fulfi ll the needs of a specifi c child and to substantially argue about the conviction that sign language is a factor potentially detrimental to the development of th...