Investigating deaf children’s plural and diverse use of sign and spoken languages in a super diverse context

Abstract

This paper examines the meaning of plurality and diversity with respect to deaf children’s sign and spoken language exposure and repertoire within a super diverse context. Data is drawn from a small-scale project that took place in the North of England in a Local Authority (LA) site for deaf education. The project documented the language landscape of this site and gathered five individual case studies of deaf children to examine their plural and diverse language practices at home and at school. Analysis of the language landscape and case studies from this context is undertaken in order to define and exemplify deaf children’s language plurality and diversity in terms of context and individual experience. Concepts of repertoire are explored with particular reference to the unique type of translanguaging that the plural use of sign and spoken languages affords. Implications of these preliminary insights are discussed in terms of the development of methodologies that are sensitive to the particular translanguaging practices of deaf children, and approaches to pedagogy that are appropriately nuanced and responsive to deaf children’s language plurality and diversity.

SLA and the Study of Equitable Multilingualism

“…In the middle, we may have “code gliding” or “multiple, frequent, rapid, and unselfconscious weaving in and out of languages” (Sridhar & Sridhar, , p. 5), similar to what Swanwick et al. () described of Indira. Translanguaging, where language boundaries are said to be blurred or fused, may have a place at the other extreme of the same code mixing continuum.…”

Adapting an Online Survey Platform to Permit Translanguaging

“…The cohort was designed to be representative of the many differences within the population(s) of deaf young people at this point in the early 21st century (Leigh 2009). Deaf young people are highly diverse, not just in terms of degrees of deafness, age of onset, and cultural and socioeconomic background, but also in terms of their exposure to and use of different languages and modalities of language; typically, spoken languages and signed languages as well as written, spoken, and visual modalities (Swanwick et al 2016).…”

“…Dependent on context and interlocutor, deaf young people may modify their productive language use and vary in their receptive language abilities (Swanwick 2017). For example, a young person who uses spoken language at home and in school may nonetheless sign with peers and at deaf community events; or a young person whose first language is a signed language such as BSL (British Sign Language) may nonetheless have good access to spoken language in the right acoustic environments; other deaf young people may be firmly monolingual whether in a spoken or signed language (Crowe et al 2013; Swanwick et al 2016). However, a good spoken language user is not necessarily a good reader, demonstrating how modality not just language has implications for knowledge acquisition and production.…”

“…Without the possibility of accessing a survey in BSL visually, even if the response to closed questions was given in written English, those whose language strengths were not auditory/written would be severely disadvantaged. In reality, many deaf young people use multiple language resources, albeit in different and highly diverse ways within their own translanguaging communication and semiotic practices (Kusters et al 2017; Swanwick et al 2016). Prior online survey research for use with deaf populations had addressed to some extent the importance of access to survey material in a signed language and also the choice of language options within a single survey (e.g., American Sign Language, Manually Coded English, and written English) (Gerich and Lehner 2006; Graybill et al 2010).…”

Family language policy on holiday: four multilingual signing and speaking families travelling together

“…As we discuss in §4.4, there is a potential pitfall with the practice of signspeaking: particularly when the person is not fluent in sign (e.g. see Swanwick, Wright, and Salter 2016), the 'speaking' in signspeaking can dominate, and the utterance therefore becomes hard to understand or makes no sense to deaf interlocutors (De Meulder et al 2019). Even when signspeaking is part of a deaf-hearing family's 1FLP with fluent signers who are experienced at signspeaking, deaf family members may not always understand (Pizer, Walters, and Meier 2012).…”