Languages, Literacies, and Translations: Examining Deaf Students' Language Ideologies through English-to-ASL Translations of Literature.

Abstract

Educators have long grappled with how print literacy might be best taught to deaf students and which language might best serve this purpose: spoken English, American Sign Language (ASL), or another communication mode. Over the decades, pedagogical approaches have been introduced and critiqued according to the various ideologies of different stakeholders. We know very little, however, about the ideologies that deaf students themselves carry about language and the complex ways these ideologies may be contributing to or interfering with their acquisition of print literacy. This dissertation, thus, explores deaf high school students’ attitudes and beliefs about language and interrogates how their ideologies are confirmed, contradicted, or complicated through their encounters with English and ASL via ASL translations of literature in their English classroom. This qualitative study collected data on how deaf students’ ideologies played out when their teacher integrated a unit consisting of ASL translations of English literary works into their English class. The findings highlight how the students’ language ideologies are neither predictable nor consistent, and that many students carry conflicting and even mistaken ideologies about each language that lead them to believe that ASL has no grammar rules and disparage English for being too strict. Moreover, the students’ ideologies profoundly affect the degree of alienation or ownership that they feel towards each language, and especially towards print literacy, which nearly all of the students identify as being a “hearing” practice. The students’ complex relationship with each language is illuminated especially clearly in their reactions to ASL translations of English texts, an experience that many of them found to be enriching and deeply validating because for the first time, they could bring their literacy practices and linguistic strengths from ASL to the experience of reading in the English classroom, and thus achieve a more meaningful and evocative reading of the stories. The ways these students interacted with the ASL translations challenge us to broaden our understanding of literacy and reading so that it is inclusive of the literacy practices that they brought to the table while working with the translations.