Carolina Plaza-Pust - Bilingualism and Deafness: On Language Contact in the Bilingual Acquisition of Sign Language and Written Language

Carolina Plaza-Pust

Bilingualism and Deafness

Sign Languages
and Deaf Communities

Editors

Annika Herrmann, Markus Steinbach, Ulrike Zeshan

Editorial board

Carlo Geraci, Rachel McKee, Victoria Nyst,

Sibaji Panda, Marianne Rossi Stumpf,

Felix Sze, Sandra Wood

Volume 7

ISBN 978-1-5015-1396-1

e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-0499-0

e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0493-8

ISSN 2192-516X

e-ISSN 2192-5178

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

2016 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin and Ishara Press, Preston, UK

www.degruyter.com

For my family and friends

After all, we are all of us explorers, and we all have much to bring to each other from our own journeyings .

(Ladd 2003: 20)

With the present volume I wish to share not only the knowledge gained about bilingualism and deafness throughout the last years but also the enthusiasm that has guided me all along since I began to work on this project. When I engaged in the endeavour I did not know with precision the details of the journey that lay ahead. Yet I took up the challenge with curiosity and determination. As it turned out, sign bilingualism revealed itself as an intriguing and enriching object of scientific enquiry. Not only does it confront us with a myriad of interrogations, it also compels us to extend our knowledge in multiple areas.

From the beginning, this work has been inspired by a dialogue not only with scholars and professionals, but with all sorts of people who expressed their interest in sharing their questions, ideas and experiences.

I want to extend my sincere gratitude to all those who so generously contributed, in one way or another, to this work over the last years. As a hearing multilingual who is not a member of the deaf community I would like to express my gratitude first and foremost to all deaf people, children and adults, whom I have met over the last years. Thank you for sharing your views and experiences, and for expressing your enthusiasm about this project, which has provided additional motivation for its completion. In particular, I wish to thank Knut Weinmeister. Knut and I worked together on several different phases of the longitudinal investigation. Without his efforts, the realisation of the part of the study dedicated to the acquisition of German Sign Language (DGS) would not have been possible.

Very special thanks to Helen Leuninger for her guidance throughout my academic life, and the confidence she has placed in me. Her profound knowledge of sign language linguistics (and many other intricate areas of psycholinguistics) as well as her commitment to the recognition of sign language and their users in Germany have been a constant source of inspiration. I am grateful for her encouragement from the beginning to conduct a study on sign bilingualism, and for her thoughtful feedback to previous versions of the present manuscript.

I am indebted to many people for their support and cooperation throughout the years dedicated to the present work. In particular, I would like to thank Klaus-B. Gnther for making it possible for me to conduct a longitudinal study with deaf students attending the bilingual programme established at the Ernst-Adolf-Eschke school in Berlin. The opportunity to carry out this research came at a time when I realised that the methods controversy consisted not only in a debate over different educational philosophies but that it had also created a climate of suspicion about scientifically based research into deaf students linguistic skills. Thank you also for the thoughtful and thorough feedback to an earlier version of the present work.

I wish to acknowledge with gratitude the collaboration with the members of the research team concomitant to the bilingual education programme over the years, their readiness to share materials, time for discussions, providing support wherever and whenever needed. Special thanks for all of this to Beate Krausmann, Claudia Wilsdorf, Johannes Hennies, and, again, to Knut Weinmeister.

I also extent my gratitude to the headmasters, Ulrich Mbius and Veronika Fuchsmann, who allowed research to be conducted in their school. My sincere thanks to the students for their participation in this study, for their readiness to produce signed and written narratives, even though they were faced with the task of recounting the same picture story time and again.

I am also grateful to all participants in the survey on the status of deaf education in Europe, to the participants in the interviews I have conducted over the last years at various educational institutions in several countries, and to headmasters and teachers who have facilitated my sitting in several bilingual classes so that I could get a glimpse of actual teaching practices. To undertake a longitudinal study in the distance (Berlin) would not have been possible without the aid of good companions on the spot. Hence, I extend un grand merci to Marie-Caroline and Joerg for the provision of the logistics, and their unparalleled hospitality and friendship.

The sign language research community is a small community compared to the communities of researchers dedicated to the investigation of other topics. Since I engaged in the journey of investigating sign bilingualism I have come across many colleagues who helped to sharpen my own views about sign bilingualism and deaf education. For stimulating discussions over the many years dedicated to this work I wish to particularly express my gratitude to Agns Millet, Anne Baker, Anne-Marie Parisot, Annette Hohenberger, Astrid Vercaingne-Mnard, Bencie Woll, Beppie van de Bogaerde, Brigitte Garcia, Daniel Daigle, Esperanza Morales-Lpez, Eva Waleschkowski, Mar Prez Martn, Mara Massone, Marie-Anne Sallandre, Marie-Thrse LHuillier, Merle Mahon, Mieke van Herreweghe, Victria Gras, and Wolfgang Mann. In particular, I would like to thank Esperanza for her confidence in many common projects and for her enthusiasm in envisaging new projects to come.

Special thanks to the editors of the Sign Language and Deaf Communities series, Markus Steinbach and Annika Herrmann, for guiding me with patience and support through the publication process.

I am indebted to my friends and to my family for always being there. Thank you for your continued patience and caring love. Thank you also for your support and motivation to bring this work to a good close. To you I dedicate this work.

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The notation devices used in transcriptions of our DGS examples are as follows (note: we use the original notation in citations of examples from other authors; only the glosses of signs in DGS examples were translated into English):