BSL in its Social Context
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BSL in its Social Context
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Session 4: Child-Directed, Deaf-Blind, Narrative and Informative
Registers
Child Directed Language
Having considered the
development of the child in the first year of life, we now have to look at the stage where
language begins to develop. For hearing
children, this is the stage of first words and gesture.
For deaf children it is the stage of first signs and gesture. In
fact, one major complication is that deaf and hearing children both gesture at this time
and it is a major task to try to differentiate the two aspects. It can appear as if hearing children also sign but
of course it is very unlikely that they will combine their gestures to create meaning. We are covering the pre-language stage. It is important because research shows that it is
a vital stage for language to come later. Comparisons
between deaf and hearing mothers is important. In mother-child
interaction, the mother can: · direct (tell the child to do something) e.g. “Put it here” · interpret (explain what the child has done) e.g.
“oh, you've dropped it” · ask questions e.g. “who’s a lovely
monster?” “what can that be?” · report (make a statement e.g. “We have one like
that”) · name (e.g. colour naming The hearing mothers
asked many questions and answered some. The
deaf mother asked fewer questions and concentrated on naming the toys. She did not use tag questions like ‘isn’t
it?’ or ‘haven’t you?’ Deaf
mothers would not use tag questions like the hearing mother. The adult form of BSL tag question is not used
with children. The deaf mother moved
the duck, but the hearing mother did less. Hearing
mothers use ‘near and far’ games by linking the distance of the toy from the
baby with their tone of voice. The deaf
mother moves the toy more - maybe to get the child’s attention. The deaf mother kept repeating the name of the
object, rather than commenting on it. The
behaviour is different at 3, 6 and 9 months. The
hearing mother talked more about the sound the toy makes.
The deaf mother talked about colour. But
both mothers talk about colours and sound. The
implications of the study are important: we need to think about the way things are talked
about for the child. Examples of this
behaviour are on the Open University tape. The
mother gets the child’s attention. As
the child gets older, the mother may not have to point because she can get the child to
follow her eyes or head movement. Young
children need pointing as well. Hearing
mothers don’t use only eyes and head for direction; they use pointing as well. Motherese (or
"Caretaker language")
This is the special
register that adults use to talk to small children. We
already know from sociolinguistics that adults change the register of their signing when
they sign to children. However, we don't sign
in only one way to all children. There is a
special register for signing to small children - often called Motherese. This is also called “Baby-talk” i.e. the
mother does not sign like she would to adults, or older children. The term “Motherese”
is not used much formally now (because it excludes other caretakers, especially Fathers),
and “Caretaker language” is considered more correct. However, “Motherese” carries on as a
useful term that many people use informally. Research shows
Motherese occurs in all languages. It uses
signs or words that only children use. In
English, this includes words like “doggie”, “choo-choo” or “bow-wow”. Many English words have an element of repetition,
and often have a final “s” added, e.g. jim-jams, bye-bye, din-dins, wee-wee,
did-dums and night-night. We will see that
there is also an element of repetition in Motherese in BSL.
The intonation in the voice is different in speech. In BSL the facial expression and movement and
location of the signs are different. When we look at a video
of a mother using “Motherese” in BSL, we can see that there are many different
features of signs in baby-talk. Here are some
of the major ones: · signing on the baby's body (when the location should
be on the signer) · using the baby's hands to sign on the adult's or
child's body · placing the child on the lap and facing away from
the mother · signing on the object · signing using the object · signing bigger than normal · signing repeated more often then normal · sign lasts longer than normal · signing special “baby” signs rather than
adult signs Motherese is used to
try and solve some major problems that the child has compared to an adult. The baby does not understand the language very
well, doesn’t know much about the world, and isn't very skilled at reasoning. The child also may not be looking at the mother
(as we saw in the last session when we considered eye contact). In Motherese, for
example, the mother repeats the sign TRACTOR far more often for the child than she would
normally. In another example, BUS is made
bigger, and with more repetitions. Also, AEROPLANE moves all over the place, for a long
time. This is to get the child’s
attention. It gives the child a chance to
copy the sign. When the child does sign, the
mother then repeats it, but smaller, more like adult.
The mother does not expect the child to sign like that. (This is important
to tell hearing mothers because they will not know this). Kantor studied 2
children, from 0;8, to 2;8. She found that as
the children got older, they made more utterances and used more two-sign utterances. The mothers were sensitive to this, and mirrored
the same pattern, so that too used more signs, and their utterances were longer. Young children also use a lot of pointing in their
signing, and Kantor found that mothers also used a lot of pointing with their babies. The mother does not
sign in a way that is too difficult for the child to understand. When the child is very young and cannot produce
signs, or only one or two signs, the Mother only produces one or two signs. As the child acquires more language, the Mother’s
signing becomes more complex, too. Kantor
found in ASL that deaf mothers do not inflect their verbs, but use citation forms instead. If they do ever inflect the verb, it is only
towards things or people that are present (so there is no use of an index to establish an
index for someone or something that is not there). Instead
of using complex grammar, they use different strategies, especially to avoid indexing or
inflecting verbs. They bring the object
they want to talk about into the signing space (i.e. they show it to the child). This means they don’t even need to point. One
mother picked up the object, brought it into view, widened her eyes, covered her mouth and
then pointed to the object. This was her way
to get the child’s attention, and keep it. Her
aim here was to name objects. Bringing the object
into the signing space allows the Mother to point on or over the object, instead of
pointing towards it. The mothers in Kantor’s
study only pointed towards the object regularly when the children were 2;6 or over. Instead of inflecting
verbs, they also use pointing (e.g. instead
of signing BROKEN where something is broken, they point to it, and then sign BROKEN in
neutral space, or signing YOU SIT THERE, rather than YOU SIT-THERE). In Kantor’s study, the mother did not inflect
verbs until the child was 2;6. The verb modulations
were made over objects, rather than in their absence.
For example PULL-TOY was signed over the toy, and when a painting was
finished, she signed FINISHED over the painting, so it was clear that the painting and the
toy were the topics of conversation, without
marking them linguistically. At one stage the
experimenter was behind the camera, and the mother signed to the child SHE WATCH-YOU
rather than SHE-WATCH-YOU. The mothers also did
not use possessive pronouns (e.g. MY, YOUR etc.) until the child was older (2;1). Until then, she just used pointing instead (e.g.
BOOK YOU rather than BOOK YOURS). When her
son was 2;1, she started using the possessive because the child was ready to understand
the differences between the two ideas. Up
until the study ended at 2;8, though, the child still didn’t produce the possessive signs for himself. We have described much
of the input of the adults, but connected to this is the question: how does the child
respond? The hearing child is expected to
respond with actions, some gestures, and later words.
The deaf child may respond with gesture which might never become a sign, or
it might respond with a sign. This raises the
whole question of signs and gestures that are not signs.
This is a very interesting area of BSL acquisition and we will discuss it in
the next session when we start to discuss the production by the children in more depth.
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