The Semiotic Ecology of a Deaf Adolescent in a Hearing World (Poster 24)

• In Event: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research
  In Invited Poster Session: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research Poster Session

Abstract

I explore the overlooked ways of meaning-making of a signing deaf adolescent. Lack of language access–spoken or signed–has become the overriding narrative of signing deaf children from hearing families. In this narrative, deaf adolescents’ language and literacy interactions, are depicted as anemic and noncomplex. I describe a case study of everyday interactions between one deaf adolescent and hearing non-signing others around and with texts broadly defined. I take a semiotic ecological approach, framed by ethnographies of home and community literacies, studies of deaf individual’s semiotic repertoires, and Goodwin’s co-operative action theory. Evidence-based accounts of deaf children’s dynamic, complex language and literacy interactions are crucial to combat deficit frames and to support teachers in fostering students’ literacy development.

Author

• Betsy Beckert, Boston University