Inproceedings,
How to improve metalinguistic awareness by writing a language without writing: sign languages and SignWriting.
Grapholinguistics in the 21st century, page 1039-1065. Brest, Fluxus Editions, (2021)
DOI: 10.36824/2020-graf-bian
Abstract
Multilingualism permits to compare elements of each known language, favoring the development of metalinguistic awareness which helps to correlate the functioning of own reference languages (L1, L2, etc.). To all intents and purposes, signing Deaf are bilingual people with sign language (SL) as L1 and an own vocal language (VL) as L2. Since deafness affects only the auditory canal, it should be reasonable to expect that Deaf (signing or not) have the same competence in VL writing than hearing people; however, Gillot (1998) has demonstrated that 80% of French Deaf adults have a scarce level of literacy. On the other hand, Garcia et al. (2005) have proved that deaf signers have a better relationship with writing than Deaf not knowing SL, while Perini (2013) has evinced how SL knowledge helps the Deaf to understand the functions of writing, a fundamental activity for writing proficiency. To improve Deaf's writing it would therefore be even more useful to propose exercises comparing the written forms of SL and of VL. However, this is not simple, as SLs are historically pure öral" languages, without an established writing system. That notwithstanding, experiments using Sutton's (1995) SignWriting, a graphic representation system of SL, have shown how the knowledge of a SL writing system allows, in very natural ways, the emergence of metalinguistic reflections which can then be reinvested to better understand the structure and functioning of the own reference VL.
