Chapter 8: Creating Language in a Vacuum: Deaf Children as Creative Communicators

The majority of the world’s deaf children grow up without early access to either a spoken or a sign language. Early exposure to sign language supports cognitive and linguistic development in deaf children and provides the language base they need to develop written literacy. In industrialized countries, there are growing numbers of immigrant deaf children who arrive with limited expressive language and little experience with formal education. Deaf individuals who grow up in relative isolation from other deaf children and adults present fascinating cases that reveal the capacity of deaf children to create language. Many of these deaf children use gestures with their hearing families to communicate. These gestures often become regularized into a system known as home sign. These home sign systems are evidence of the human capacity for language even when children are exposed only to an impoverished input. A critical question is whether or not the home signs and gestures these children use provide an adequate foundation for a later acquisition of sign language and a written language. This chapter will argue that these children should be viewed as language users who are capable of learning.