Exploring Signs in Life: Language and Literacy Practices of a Deaf Adolescent in Nonsigning Environments

• In Event: Issues of Language, Literacy, and Spatial Understanding in Visually-Based Learning

Abstract

The language and literacy practices of signing deaf children from nonsigning hearing families are often depicted as anemic and lacking complexity. I describe an ethnographic case study of everyday interactions between one deaf adolescent and hearing non-/limited-signing others with texts broadly defined to include text messages, drawings, maps, graphic novels, etc. Drawing on ethnographies of home and community literacies, studies of deaf individuals’ semiotic repertoires, and Goodwin’s co-operative action theory, I center how meaning is co-constructed and negotiated both in moment-to-moment interactions and over time. Evidence-based accounts of deaf children’s dynamic, complex literacy practices are crucial to combat deficit frames and support teachers in building with deaf children’s practices to foster their literacy development.

Author

• Betsy Beckert, Boston University