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4 6/19/09 1:37 PM Page 457

M A R A I G N AC I A M A S S O N E A N D
MNICA BAEZ

Deaf Childrens
Construction of Writing

High illiteracy rates among the Argentine deaf popu-

lation, even after long years of schooling (Massone, Simn, and
Gutirrez 1999; Massone, Simn, and Druetta 2003), point to the
need to revise certain approaches to deaf literacy, particularly in school
settings. Qualitative change in deaf literacy requires the use of multi-
ple conceptual tools if learners are to be able to tackle its complexity
without reductionism or oversimplification. We define illiteracy as the
absence of knowledge that involves but is not confined to graphic
marks. It has been contended that the term may also apply to the dif-
ficulty one experiences in interpreting and using written materials in
a variety of contexts, as well as the inability to take part in a literate
culture despite having mastered its written symbols (Ferreiro 2000).
Various studies have focused on different aspects of the conquest
of the written language by deaf children and teenagers.1 Stressing
their competence in and need for visual communication, this re-
search therefore calls for the rejection of oralism in favor of the new
ways of knowing made possible by todays essentially visual media
and multimedia.

Mara Ignacia Massone is at the Centre for Research on Philosophical and Cultural
Anthropology (CIAFIC), Linguistics Department. She is also a senior researcher at the
Argentine National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET).
Mnica Baez is at the Rosario Institute of Education Sciences Research (IRICE),
which is affiliated with the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research
(CONICET).
We wish to thank Mnica Descalzi for her assistance with the English version.

457
Sign Language Studies Vol. 9 No. 4 Summer 2009
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458 | Sign Language Studie s

In speaking of writing as a language or a mode of language, we mean

far more than simply communicating. We are also referring to the mak-
ing of meaning, to the interpretation of cultural practices, and to the re-
construction of the representations that define the family and culture in
which every person is subjectively and socially embedded. Thus, literacy
should be encouraged as a way to promote integration, and the processes
that deaf children engage in to develop it deserve close attention.
In order to account for the specific features of the cognitive and
linguistic processes that deaf people utilize when dealing with writ-
ten language, we draw on two perspectives that have revolutionized
the traditional understanding of the factors at stake in deaf literacy.
These are the socioanthropological view of deafness and the psy-
cholinguistic theory of writing, which is based on psychogenetic stud-
ies (Ferreiro and Teberosky 1979). Written languages characterize the
practices, representations, and discourses of the literate hearing soci-
eties in which deaf communities are embedded. Deaf children, to
whom written language is a second language, are linguistically, com-
municatively, and pragmatically competent in their own natural sign
language. We explore deaf childrens literacy and the role that sign lan-
guage plays in the reconstruction of written language.
The present study is part of a wider research project that focuses
on how these children develop literacy skills. The article concentrates
on the cognitive and linguistic processes involved in understanding
written Spanish. It also discusses the conceptual schemata of language
learners for whom sound does not constitute a source of information.
They are already competent, nevertheless, in their own natural lan-
guage (i.e., sign language), which presupposes a distinctive type of lin-
guistic organization (Massone and Machado 1994).
This article analyzes the interpretation of an illustrated text by deaf
children who had had no oral training. The conclusions we draw are
based on data obtained at the exploratory stage of this ongoing proj-
ect. Although they are therefore provisional, we offer them here to en-
courage the revision of deaf literacy practices.

Literacy and the Deaf Community

In Latin America and other parts of the world (e.g., Spain and Portu-
gal), the prevailing behaviorist and neocognitivist models regard oral-
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Deaf Childrens Construction of Writing | 459

ity as the gateway to deaf literacy. They oversimplify the relationship

between oral and written language, reinforcing ethnocentric and
monocultural representations and ignoring the complexity of the di-
alectical process that occurs between the knowing subject and the
written language as a specific object of knowledge.
Some studies (Massone, Simn, and Gutirrez 1999; Domnguez
Gutirrez 1999) focus on how best to teach deaf people to read and
write by discussing educational experiences and suggesting various ap-
proaches and methods. Other studies consider deaf peoples written
production from a descriptive point of view and focus on mistakes (e.g.,
Fernndez Viader and Pertusa 1995). Still others deal with the causes
of mistakes (i.e., with the relationship between the levels of oral and
written competence) (Newport and Meier 1985; Bells and Teberosky
1989). Bells and Teberosky examine the difference in verbal compe-
tence between deaf and hearing children and its influence on early rep-
resentation of the written language.
To Massone, Simn, and Gutirrez (1999) and Massone, Simn, and
Druetta (2003), this literature points to the need for a constructivist ap-
proach to deaf literacy. The former conducted an interesting experi-
ment at a Mendoza, Argentina, school, where the constructivist
approach was used to teach deaf children who had little reading and
writing experience. Starting with simple sentences, the students learned
how to write long texts within a year. Instruction was given in Argen-
tine Sign Language (LSA).
Particularly relevant to this article is Ferreiro and Teberoskys work
(1979) with children who are learning Spanish and other alphabetic sys-
tems (e.g., Portuguese, French, Hebrew) and who come from a variety
of sociocultural and economic backgrounds.
Their research, grounded in Piagetian theory specified three objec-
tives: (a) identify the cognitive processes that underlie literacy acquisi-
tion; (b) understand the nature of childrens hypotheses; and (c) ascertain
the specific knowledge with which children begin their formal educa-
tion (Ferreiro and Teberosky 1999).
After more than ten years of study, they were able to describe the
original and relevant hypothesizing processes that enable hearing
children to reconstruct the alphabetic nature of the literacy system
used in their social and cultural environment. Thus, they revealed the
conceptual process by means of which individuals learn to make sense
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460 | Sign Language Studie s

of written texts and to reconstruct and reformulate possible writing sys-

tems instead of isolated words. These nonconventional systems show
an understanding of certain aspects of the writing system and the in-
ternal logic of childrens arguments.2
The heuristic value of Ferreiro and Teberoskys work has led us to
view this learning process as a psycholinguistic theory. As such, it de-
fines new issues, poses new questions, and provides the conceptual and
methodological tools with which to tackle them. As Ferreiro herself
wrote of Piagets production, the most profound contribution of a
theory does not lie in the truths it establishes but in its capacity to gen-
erate new questions (Ferreiro 1999, 55).
In line with these and other historical, linguistic, and discourse analy-
sis findings, we view literacy as a social, cultural, and historical ability
that goes beyond the mere transcription of oral language. It is also a
symbolic object insofar as the writing system constitutes a language rep-
resentation system. Thus, literacy should be seen first and foremost as an
intellectual achievement rather than a trainable skill. Literate individu-
als acquire a particular way of understanding the world because they
comprehend how graphic marks can represent speech; in other words,
they know how to distinguish the written from the nonwritten.
From this theoretical standpoint, literacy constitutes an intellectual
achievement rather than a trainable skillthis latter perspective is sus-
tained even nowadays by oralism in our country. It may also be inter-
preted as a semiotic function since it enables a specific comprehension
that entails learning how to represent what is said by means of graphic
marks while distinguishing them from what is not written. In this re-
spect, we can speak of children who are capable not only of reading
and writing according to their own conceptual schemata but also of
reflecting on what is read and written. Such writers make written lan-
guage their own, a process that involves cognitive skills, linguistic com-
petence, and the social conditions that determine access to literacy.
We view Spanish literacy learning by deaf students as second-language
learning. The interpretation of the linguistic and graphic features of
written Spanish involves the recategorization and reformulation of the
knowledge available to these students in the sign language they speak,
which possesses specific syntactic characteristics (Massone and Machado
1994). We do not seek here to confirm the hypotheses formulated by
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Deaf Childrens Construction of Writing | 461

previous researchers but to understand the conceptualization process that

we assume both deaf and hearing children carry out. We are interested
in the constructive activity of deaf learners, although we do not rule out
the possibility of our coming across such writers categories.

Graphic Segmentation of Written Texts

The psychogenetic research mentioned earlier shows that one of chil-
drens first conceptual achievements lies in viewing writing as a sub-
stitute object that differs from drawing, which constitutes yet another
representational system. In a literate culture, both systems share graphic
spaces such as books, billboards, posters, and magazines, all of which are
made out of what literate people identify as pages. These graphic surfaces
are the privileged site of text inscription. The text appears graphically
as a visual whole divided up into variously distributed parts of different
lengths. Thus, headings, subheadings, paragraphs, sentences, and words
constitute meaningful culturalnot naturalsegments.
Among the different kinds of text segments that literate, hearing
adults regard as natural, we should consider in more detail the spaces be-
tween words. These, together with other graphic elements, enable read-
ers to interpret what has been written. Such textual conventions can
be traced back to the institutionalization of text morphology in West-
ern literacy tradition. They are the outcome of social and historical
transformations that have affected the ways in which people read and
write and knowledge is passed on, widening the gap between oral and
written language.
By considering that the meaning of a text is inherent in both our
text organization patterns and language use structures, and that those
patterns have, in general, a social origin, we understand the need to
distinguish between literacy and textuality. This distinction makes it
possible to approach the various problems children face in their acqui-
sition of the former, as well as the historical processes that influence
the ways in which the latter manifests itself nowadays.
An exhaustive discussion of these processes is beyond the scope of
this article. Suffice it to say that the graphic division of information into
words was introduced around the end of the seventh century by Irish
and Anglo-Saxon monks who spoke Celtic and Germanic languages
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462 | Sign Language Studie s

and recorded information by writing it down. Since, for them, Latin

constituted a visible language (Parkes 2001), they followed Latin
grammarians morphological criteria and thus altered contemporary
graphic conventions and therefore texts, which until then had been
characterized by scriptio continua. Another fundamental change also took
place as a result: Silent reading became valued. Up to that time, read-
ing out loud, in either a loud or a low voice (ruminatio), had been the
norm. The slow and difficult institutionalization of blank spaces be-
tween words, then, modified not only the material appearance of texts
but also the very notions of writing and reading, as well as of writer
and reader.
The theoretical units that linguists developed to identify words
(e.g., morpheme, moneme, minimal syntactic unit) are no more than
technical terms and are alien to ordinary language users. Literate peo-
ple have intuitively adopted the definition of word as a set of letters
between two spaces (Coulmas 1996), a concept that is based on a
purely graphic criterion. It is this definition that teachers impart to stu-
dents since the graphic fragmentation of written utterances by means
of blank spaces provides a sort of explicit evidence in which the un-
derlying concept remains implicit.
This notion, which is transparent to literate adults, is opaque
to those who do not master the particular features of writing; in fact,
they need to put into play complex cognitive and linguistic processes
to acquire it. Furthermore, Spanish literacy learning requires a dif-
ferent kind of linguistic analysis from that used in learning Argen-
tine Sign Language. According to Massone and Machado (1994),
LSA is a nongraphic language whose grammatical organization in-
volves syntactic, morphemic, lexical, and pragmatic ways of represent-
ing linguistic categories that do not correspond to those of written
Spanish.
From the very beginning, readers-writers must distinguish between
iconic and linguistic systems from a representational point of view.
They must also command a conventional graphic repertoire and, at the
same time, analyze and reinterpret graphic sequences in terms of writ-
ten language categories (i.e., of meaning-making units). All of these
processes point to different analytical dimensions vis--vis the subject
of our study.
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Deaf Childrens Construction of Writing | 463

Interpreting Illustrated Texts

Ferreiro and Teberosky (1999, 83) point out the following:

Since our writing system is alphabetic, it has been insistently claimed

that it represents speech sounds, that it constitutes the phonetic tran-
scription of language. We share others view (cf. Smith 1971) that
this interpretation may be called into question . . . writing is very
closely related to drawing and to language, but it is neither a tran-
scription of (oral) language, nor a by-product of drawing. Writing
constitutes a specific type of substitute object whose genesis we wish
to explain.

Our goal is to show how children regard reading and writing and the
problems they face, and, therefore, not all of our experimental situations
are tests. For the study reported here we conducted interviews accord-
ing to critical exploration guidelines. Each child was given a string of
words accompanied by pictures, as well as an illustrated sequence of
sentences. We examined their hypotheses about the relationship be-
tween drawing and writing and, in the case of the sentences, the value
they attributed to sequential segments.
Our results reveal the existence of a conceptualization process. At
first children are unable to distinguish between drawing and writing:
At this stage meaning could be found in either one since they consti-
tute an inseparable whole. Then children come to differentiate be-
tween the two, and finally they consider text properties in terms of
segmentation and pointer letters that enable the ascription of mean-
ing to each word or graphic segment.
In line with these findings, we hypothesize that, in approaching a
written text in order to comprehend it, as in other knowledge do-
mains, deaf children, like any other children, have to face and solve
logical problems.
In the present article we analyze the issues we dealt with in these
studies and focus on illustrated sentences. We interpret deaf childrens
hypotheses about what the text represents and thus about the relation-
ship between the graphic segments of the syntagma (linguistic units)
and the drawing, as well as about that between segments and the
whole.
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464 | Sign Language Studie s

Our Ongoing Research Project

Goals
In order to help challenge and revise theoretical standards of deaf lit-
eracy, we set out to explore the way in which deaf children acquire
written language.
In this article we do the following: (a) investigate deaf subjects
constructive activity in this field; (b) categorize deaf childrens ways of
interpreting illustrated texts; and (c) determine the compatibility of
the various processes through which hearing and deaf children learn
written Spanish.

Method
Population
We set out to examine the processes that accompany the reconstruc-
tion of writing by fifteen deaf children attending special schools in the
cities of Rosario and San Nicols in Argentina (see table 1). We were
particularly interested in the compatibility of hearing and deaf chil-
drens learning processes vis--vis written Spanish. We took the learn-
ers analysis of the graphic features of the text as a fundamental, initial
clue to the type of linguistic analysis entailed by the construction of
the notion of words.
The children we studied signed several LSA varieties and had been
poorly trained in oral Spanish and not systematically taught to read and
write, as oralism in our country has no method to promote literacy ac-
quisition.3 Therefore, the children were practically illiterate, but had
some knowledge of written texts such as their names and isolated
words. Although age and grade were not considered as variables at the
time of the interviews, they have been included in table 1 to illustrate
the usual traits of the deaf population, as well as to highlight the scope
of the results. Multiple social and family factors condition these chil-
drens school attendance, and school entrance ages may therefore dif-
fer from the standard ages for hearing children. Older ages in the data
do not necessarily mean the children have repeated a grade, and the
criteria for promotion to the next grade vary from one special school
to another but in general depend on the childrens speech abilities.
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Deaf Childrens Construction of Writing | 465

It is important to note that, in Argentina, deaf public schools pres-

ent a homogeneous population whose students generally come from
lower class environments. Children arrive at school with poor or no
speech but with sign language. These schools are hearing sociolinguis-
tic settings that continue teaching oralism. If teachers of deaf students
sign, they do so in Spanish word order. We believe the group of chil-
dren under study is representative of the whole deaf population that
attends school. Furthermore, it is very difficult to conduct research at
deaf schools in our country, and in some schools it is impossible to
do so since permission is refused, especially when the researchers are
known to be nonoralist.

Table 1. Ages and Grades of Interviewees

Number Name Age (years and months) Grade
1 Anabella 8.3 First
2 Ariel 9.6 Second
3 Dbora 9.1 Second
4 Ezequiel 8.5 Kindergarten
5 Isaac 7 Kindergarten
6 Leonardo 8.2 Second
7 Leonel 5.8 Kindergarten
8 Lorenzo 7.5 Kindergarten
9 Marcos 8.6 Kindergarten
10 Martn 10 Third
11 Milagros 4.4 Kindergarten
12 Silvina 5.1 Kindergarten
13 Jonathan 8.8 First
14 Jonathan 8.11 First
15 Roco 8 Kindergarten

Instruments and Procedure

We carried out individual interviewees with nine cards, each contain-
ing an image and a string of written words. The images conformed
to the prevailing standards for school texts.4 Ferreiros (1978) and Fer-
reiro and Teberoskys (1979) protocols were used, although we mod-
ified them to better reflect the childrens communicative ability in LSA
and the possibilities this offers for the translation of certain categories.
The sentences on the cards were as follows:
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466 | Sign Language Studie s

1. The duck is swimming.

2. The ducks are swimming.
3. The cat is eating. [The accompanying picture shows a cat eating
fish.]
4. The cat is drinking milk. [The illustration depicts a cat and a con-
tainer with the label milk.]
5. Nicols is having milk. [The image shows a boy drinking from
a cup.]
6. The frog went out for a stroll.
7. The tortoise went out for a stroll.
8. Ral is rowing on the river.
9. The children are rowing on the river.

The task was aimed at exploring the following areas: (a) the chil-
drens hypotheses about the connection between the drawing and the
writing, (b) the meaning they ascribe to the graphic segments that
make up the latter, and (c) the possibility that children link text prop-
erties to what the images suggest.
The interviews were conducted according to the critical exploration
method (Piaget 1973; Ferreiro and Teberosky 1979) and mainly in LSA,
although hearing interviewers sometimes spoke in Spanish, especially
when they had to reproduce the sentences written on the cards in
Spanish word order. The children expressed themselves in different sign
language registers and varieties, depending on their ability to use sign
language and interact with and within it. Children never answered in
Spanish as they did not master oral Spanish. A literate adult deaf mem-
ber of the research team was present in order to control and supervise
the interviewers interventions and interpretations of the childrens ut-
terances. Therefore, we transcribe the interviews in LSA glosses with
their correspondent English translation and put between hyphens
when the interviewee had to reproduce the Spanish text on each card.
We expected that the methodological similarities between our study
and those discussed earlier would make it possible to compare data on
deaf and hearing children. Thus, we hoped to determine the ways in
which written texts make sense to deaf children. We also wanted to un-
derstand the coordination and differentiation processes they engage in
as they interact with the graphic features of both the drawings and our
writing system. Finally, our research would, we hoped, shed light on the
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Deaf Childrens Construction of Writing | 467

role of sign language in literacy learning, although an in-depth analysis

is beyond the reach of this article.

Initial Results
The following fragments of the transcribed protocols illustrate certain
types of responses consistently repeated by more than one child.

1. Lack of distinction between drawing and writing

Jonathan 2. Card 1

Interviewer: THIS WHAT? What is this? (She points to the pic-

ture.)
Jonathan: DUCK. Duck.
I: READ WHERE PRO2 READ? Where do you read?
J points to the drawing.
I: duck TO-SAY WHERE? Where does it say
duck? (She points to the text.)
J points to the image.
I: HERE TO-SAY the duck is swimming TO-SAY.
WHERE duck TO-SAY WHERE? Here it says the
duck is swimming. Where does it say duck?
J points to the picture of the duck.
I: WHERE TO-SAY is swimming? Where does it
say is swimming?
J points to the picture of the duck.

2. Distinction between drawing and writing

The picture complements and guarantees the interpretation of the text.
Text and image constitute a meaningful whole and are construed as
complementary.

2.1. The text provides the name of only one of the objects drawn.

Jonathan 1. Card 7

I: THIS WHAT? What is this? (She points to the picture.)

J: TORTOISE. Tortoise. (He points to the picture.)
I: READ WHERE PRO2 READ? Where do you read?
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468 | Sign Language Studie s

J points to the text.

I: tortoise TO-SAY WHERE? Where does it say tortoise?
J points to the image.
I: HERE (She points to the text). PRO2 TO-READ(imp) PRO2 the
tortoise went out for a stroll. WHERE TO-WRITE tortoise
WHERE? Here. (She points to the text.) Read. The tor-
toise went out for a stroll. Where is tortoise written?
J points to the words: The tortoise went out.
I: TOO WHERE stroll TO-SAY? And where does it say stroll?
J points to the drawing.
I: WHAT TO-WRITE HERE WHAT? What is written here? (She
points to the words for a stroll.)
J: TORTOISE. Tortoise.

2.2. Text and drawing constitute a complete utterance whose meaning is

apportioned between text components and pictorial objects.

Leonel. Card 5

I: TO-READ WHERE? Where do we read?

L points to the text.
I: TO-SAY WHAT? What does it say?
L: KID MILK TO-DRINK. Kid milk drinking.*
I: WHAT TO-WRITE HERE? What is written here? (She points
to the name Nicols.)
L: CUP. Cup. (He points to the cup in the drawing.)
I: HERE? Here? (She points to the words is drinking.)
L: KID. Kid. (He points to the child in the picture.)
I: TO-MAY TO-SAY is drinking TO-MAY? Could this say is
drinking? (She points to the word milk.)
L: TO-SAY-NO CHAIR. No, chair. (He points to the chair in
the drawing.)
I: HERE TO-SAY WHAT? What does it say here? (She points to
the article.5)
L: TO-NOT-KNOW. I dont know.
I: WHAT TO-SAY1 BEFORE EVERYTHING WHAT? What did you
say to me before all? (She points to the whole sentence.)
L: KID TO-DRINK MILK. Kid drinking milk.
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Deaf Childrens Construction of Writing | 469

*The syntactic sequence of Leonels utterance would correspond to

the structure of LSA. In trying to repeat it, however, he transforms it
into a new sequence that is closer to that of written Spanish. A simi-
lar situation appears in the next example:

Dbora. Card 3

I: HERE TO-SAY WHAT? What does it say here? (She points to

the text.)
D: CAT FISH TO-EAT (cont). Cat fish eating.
I: WHERE TO-SAY cat? Where does it say cat?
D points to the word cat.
I: Is eating?
D points to the words is eating.
I: Fish?
D points to the words is eating and the fish in the drawing.
I: HERE? Here? (She points to the article.)
D: TO-NOT-KNOW. I dont know.

2.3. The text is divided into two names related to the image.

Roco. Card 4

I: TO-SAY WHAT? What does it say?

R: CAT (she points to the words the cat) MILK (she points to
the words is drinking milk).
I: TO-SAY cat milk drinking? Does it say cat milk drinking?
R: TO-SAY NO. No. (She points again to the same text seg-
ments and draws a cat and a milk bottle as she explains.)

3. Consideration of the graphic properties of the text

3.1. Each segment of the text corresponds to a pictorial object.

Ezequiel. Card 8 (The sentence is made up of five graphic segments.6)

I: TO-SAY WHAT? What does it say?

E: BOAT FISH TORTOISE SNAIL BIRD. Boat fish tortoise snail
bird.
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470 | Sign Language Studie s

Leonardo. Card 3 (The sentence consists of three graphic segments.7)

I: TO-SAY WHAT? What does it say?

E: CAT MAN FISH ORANGE.
I: WHERE TO-SAY cat? Where does it say cat?
L points to the word cat.
I: Man?
E points to the article the.*
I: fish TO-SAY WHERE? Where does it say fish?
E hesitates and then points to the drawing.
I: Orange?
E points to the words is eating.

*Even though articles do not constitute a sign language category, they

are usually taught in special schools as gender markers and therefore
construed as synonymous with man or woman.8 In this case and
others, the interviewees response may have been prompted by such
confusion. However, in view of the need to attribute each segment to
a nominal category, this school interpretation is useful in that it favors
the internal consistency of childrens answers. On the other hand, we
should bear in mind the translation effort required of them. Accord-
ing to Jakobson (1985), if a language lacks a certain grammatical cat-
egory, the meaning of the category may be rendered in the language
by lexical means. These childrens mistakes would therefore be inher-
ent in the translation process and due to the scarcity and simplification
of the information available to them.

3.2. Each segment of the text corresponds to a possible segment of the

utterance.

Anabella. Card 2 (The sentence comprises three graphic segments.9

The drawing shows a larger duck swimming with smaller ones.)

I: WHERE TO-READ PRO2? Where do you read?

A fingerspells the sentence without being asked to.*
I: TO-SAY WHAT? What does it say?
A: DUCK. Duck.
I: TO-SAY duck WHERE? Where does it say duck?
A points to the words are swimming.
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Deaf Childrens Construction of Writing | 471

I: HERE? Here? (She points to the word ducks.)

A: LITTLE DUCK(pl). Little ducks.
I: HERE? Here? (She points to the article the.)
A shrugs her shoulders.
I: TO-MAY TO-SAY ducks are swimming? Could this say
ducks are swimming?
A: TO-SWIM(cont). Swimming. (She hesitates.)
I: WHAT EVERYTHING TO-SAY WHAT? What does it all say?
(She points to the whole text.)
A: TO-SWIM(cont) (she points to the article the). LITTLE
DUCK (she points to the word ducks). DUCK (she points to
the words are swimming).
Thus, she construes the text as meaning swimming duck
and little ducks, which would justify this segmentation.

*Anabella fingerspelled all of the sentences we showed her of her own

accord, which did not, however, guarantee conventional reading or
her understanding of the text.

3.3. Everything is written except the articles.

Ariel. Card 3

I: TO-SAY WHAT? What does it say?

A: CAT TO-EAT. Cat eating.
I: WHERE TO-SAY cat WHERE? Where does it say cat?
A points to the word cat.
I: WHERE TO-SAY eating? Where does it say eating?
A points to the words is eating.
I: TO-SAY HERE WHAT? What does it say here? (She points to
the article the.)
A: TO-NOT-KNOW. I dont know.

4. Everything is written, even the articles

Martn. Card 3

His interpretation is similar to Leonardos:

I: TO-SAY HERE WHAT? What does it say here? (She points to
the whole text.)
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472 | Sign Language Studie s

M: CAT TO-EAT FISH. Cat eating fish. (He points to the

matching text segments.)
I: WHERE TO-SAY cat WHERE? Where does it say cat?
M points to the word cat.
I: WHERE TO-SAY eating? Where does it say eating?
M points to the words is eating.
I: WHAT TO-SAY HERE? What does it say here? (She points
to the article the.)
M: MAN. Man.
Martn. Card 4

I: WHAT TO-SAY HERE? What . does it say here? (She points

to the whole text.)
M: CAT TO-DRINK(cont) MILK. Cat drinking milk. (He points
to the whole text.)
I: WHERE TO-SAY cat? Where does it say cat?
M points to the word cat.
I: WHERE TO-SAY drinking WHERE? Where does it say
drinking?
M points to the words is drinking.
I: Milk? WHAT TO-SAY HERE WHAT? What does it say
here? (She points to the article the.)
M: He fingerspells the.

To sum up, we categorized childrens responses according to the con-

nection they established between image and text and to their interpre-
tation of the latter in view of its graphic features. We have provisionally
arranged the different types of responses in a developmental sequence
that may be confirmed by a longitudinal study currently under way
(table 2).
In all of these cases, children drew on the pictures to predict the
meaning of the text, just as their hearing counterparts do. However, the
ways in which this relationship is established differs. In some instances,
the childrens use of images may have been influenced by their com-
petence in LSA: They would point to illustrations to convey the lexi-
cal content of terms whose signs they had not yet mastered.
Figure 1 illustrates the frequency and distribution of the types of
responses (TR) discussed.
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Deaf Childrens Construction of Writing | 473

Table 2. The Childrens Responses

Type of Response Characterization
1. lack of distinction Meaning is provided by the image. Drawing and text form an
between drawing undifferentiated whole.
and writing

2. distinction be- 2.1. The text provides The text provides a name linked to the
tween drawing and the name of only one of image. The graphic features of the for-
writing: The picture the objects drawn. mer are not considered.
complements and 2.2. Full meaning is at- The text constitutes a complete utter-
guarantees the inter- tributed to the combina- ance whose meaning is apportioned
pretation of the text. tion of text and picture. between text components and pictorial
objects.
2.3. The text is divided The text consists of two names linked
into two names related to the picture. The division into two
to the image. components is pointed out, and
together the components comprise an
utterance. A syntactic analysis seems to
have been carried out. Inclusion in this
category is determined by the
importance ascribed to the drawing.
The responses seem to seek a certain
correspondence with the subject + ver-
bal complement, which suggests a more
advanced stage although the verb is not
considered as actually written.

3. consideration of 3.1. Each segment of the The text constitutes a complete utter-
the graphic proper- text corresponds to a pic- ance even though it is just a list of the
ties of the text torial object. objects drawn. The graphic properties
of the text are beginning to be consid-
ered although it is the image that guar-
antees meaning.
3.2. Each segment of the Each segment of the text is made to
text corresponds to a correspond to a name linked to the im-
possible segment of the age but not determined by it. Children
utterance. sought correspondence between the
possible utterance and the text
3.3. Everything is writ- The text constitutes a complete utter-
ten except the articles. ance. Children try to attribute meaning
to each segment but cannot make sense
of the articles. Two answers are possi-
ble: (a) the segment applies to a man or
a woman,10 as taught in school; (b) the
interviewees say they do not know.

4. Everything is The text constitutes a complete utterance. All of the categories

written, even the are written. Conventional reading takes place; the interviewees
articles. use sign language and fingerspelling.
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474 | Sign Language Studie s

Figure 1. Distribution and frequency of the criteria (TR = types of responses)

expressed by the children.

As figure 1 shows, the predominant types of answers focus on the dis-

tinction between image and text and particularly on the analysis of the
links between text and image. These are considered from different per-
spectives: In TR 3.1 the written words provide the starting point; the
opposite occurs in TR 2.2.
The results indicate that five of these children are beginning to con-
sider the graphic properties of the text since their responses reveal at-
tention to the discontinuity of the written sequence. The idea that this
discontinuity may provide a clue to the meaning of the text may initially
be somewhat perplexing to children since, in earlier stages, they viewed
the text as consisting of just a name or two. Such confusion, however,
marks conceptual progress within Piagetian theory insofar as children
become aware of an essential component of the intuitive notion of
words, as well as of the conventional features of Spanish writing. The
process is one of conflict, in which children question their previous hy-
potheses and formulate new, more complex, ones.
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Deaf Childrens Construction of Writing | 475

In brief, our preliminary results demonstrate the following:

Both deaf and hearing children think about written texts and de-
vise original concepts that are likely linked to the nature of writ-
ten Spanish.
A developmental progression takes place in both deaf and hearing
children (Ferreiro and Teberosky 1979). The first stage is characterized
by the absence of a distinction between text and pictures, which does
not imply an inability to perceive their graphic differences. Students
view both systems as a whole, each of whose components enable the
attribution of meaning. The final stage involves an analysis in which
graphic marks constitute linguistic indicators that are interpreted from
the standpoint of sign language.
There is, however, a substantial difference. In the last type of re-
sponse, children do not see the text segments as equivalent to spo-
ken Spanish utterances. They recognize the lexical, syntactic, and
morphological components of the text and translate them into sign
language; if no adequate term is already available in sign language,
they resort to fingerspelling.
The children we studied had first learned fingerspelling at an early
stage and then mastered it at school and in language therapy sessions.
Nonetheless, our research suggests that literacy learners should re-
construct certain conceptual aspects of writing in order to use fin-
gerspelling as a productive source of information (e.g., Anabella and
Martn on card 4).
Initially, both deaf and hearing children, unlike literate adults,
seem to distinguish between what is written and what can be
read.
The influence of formal education on childrens analysis of articles
is evident in Leonardos and Martns responses. Sign language does
not contain articles. Children who try to ascribe meaning to each
written segment find no comparable, segmentable category in sign
language. At school, information about articles relates to gender
rather than to morphological and syntactic functions. Consequently,
the attribution of the meaning man to the masculine definite
article is consistent with the need to assign each segment to a nom-
inal category.10 Nevertheless, Martn later on (card 4) used finger-
spelling to distinguish the segment.
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476 | Sign Language Studie s

Final Comments
Although the widening of the sample, the analysis of cross-sectional
data, and the longitudinal study are not yet completed, our findings ap-
pear to coincide with those of Ferreiro and Teberoskys (1979) psycho-
genetically based research on writing. However, the nature of both
processes cannot yet be determined since the influence of our method-
ology cannot be ruled out. Nevertheless, we maintain the legitimacy of
our data as to the features and originality of the processes these children
engaged in. The similarity of the criteria used by deaf learners from dif-
ferent geographic, social, and school environments point, if not to the
universality of such processes, at least to the linguistic and cognitive ac-
tivity triggered by written text.
As we have already stated, we view deaf literacy as second language
learning, which thus involves a translation process. The children in our
sample carried out an interlinguistic translation ( Jakobson 1985) inso-
far as they construed the meaning and organization of the written sym-
bols from the standpoint of lexicon and structure of LSA. This kind of
translation requires reinterpreting and recoding since the translator must
find equivalence in difference, which involves examining the mutual
translatability of the languages concerned.
The ability to speak a certain language entails the ability to speak
about it, a metalinguistic operation that enables the revision and rede-
finition of the lexicon employed. Therefore, access to literacy demands
intense metalinguistic activity, which is greatly facilitated by sign lan-
guage experience and diverse communicative contexts, and a variety of
texts and textualization opportunities means more and better informa-
tion. Thus, strictly speaking, the children we studied engaged in trans-
lators rather than writers processes.
Data, therefore, show that deaf children, as every child, are active and
constructive subjects that question and reconstruct the knowledge that
context provides them with. In the particular case of deaf children the
possibilities of interaction with written Spanish is a sine qua non condi-
tion so as to learn this language. However, this does not mean that they
have first to master oral Spanish. In fact, further research with deaf chil-
dren that do not speak Spanish shows that they master the comprehen-
sion of the alphabetic principle.
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Deaf Childrens Construction of Writing | 477

Appendix

Los patos nadan.

Nicols toma la leche.

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478 | Sign Language Studie s

Notes
1. The studies were conducted in Argentina, Switzerland and Mexico.
The findings have been confirmed by research carried out in Brazil, Italy, Is-
rael, and the United States within the same theoretical framework. In addi-
tion, for a detailed review of studies that have focused on different aspects of
the conquest of the written language by deaf children and teenagers, see
C. Lepot-Froment (1996), La conqute dune langue orale et crite, in
Lenfant sourd: Communication et langage, by C. Lepot-Froment and M. Clere-
baut, 83163 (Paris: De Boeck y Larcier, 1996).
2. For information on oralism, see B. Virole and D. Martenot (2000),
Problmes de psychopdagogie, in Psychologie de la surdit, 41332 (Paris:
De Boeck and Larcier).
3. Examples of this material appear in the appendix.
4. In the Spanish original, Nicols toma la leche (Nicholas is having
milk), leche is preceded by the definite article la.
5. Ral rema en el ro (Ral is rowing on the river).
6. El gato come (the cat is eating).
7. See note 6.
8. Los patos nadan (the ducks are swimming).
9. In Spanish, articles are inflected for gender.
10. See note 4.

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