Hearing Loss

INTRODUCTION

The term deaf most

commonly refers to hearing
loss.
Hearing loss, also known as hearing impairment,
is a partial or total inability to hear. A deaf person
has little to no hearing. Hearing loss may occur in
one or both ears. In children hearing problems can
affect the ability to learn spoken language and in
adults it can cause work related difficulties. In
some people, particularly older people, hearing
loss can result in loneliness. Hearing loss can be
temporary or permanent.
 What’s the difference …
INTRODUCTION

between deaf and Deaf?

The word deaf is used to
describe or identify anyone
who has a severe hearing
problem. Sometimes i t ’s
used to refer to people who
are severely hard of hearing
too.
We u s e D e a f w i t h a c a p i t a l D
to refer to people who have
been deaf all their lives, or
since before they started to
learn to talk. They are pre-
lingually deaf.

It’s an important distinction, because Deaf There is a very strong and close Deaf

people tend to communicate in sign community with its own culture and sense

language as their first language. For most of identity, based on a shared language.

Deaf people English is a second language,

and understanding complicated messages
in English can be a problem.
 Sign Language: A True Language without
Speech
Deaf-Language:
Sign Language
2.1
Sign language (also known as signed
language) is a language that uses manual
communication to convey meaning. This
can include simultaneously employing
hand gestures, movement, orientation of
the fingers, arms or body, and facial
expressions to convey a speaker's ideas.
A F o r m a l C r i t e r i o n f o r a Tr u e L a n g u a g e
A sign language is a true language because the language
system allows a signer to comprehend and produce an
unrestricted number of grammatical sign sentences, This feat
can be accomplished with a Iimited number of signs
(vocabulary) and a system (syntax and semantics).
A n I n f o r m a l C r i t e r i o n f o r a Tr u e L a n g u a g e
An informal criterion for a true language is simple and readily
understandable. People who communicate in speech do
have language. This criterion must allow for a difference in
the physical means of communication: signing rather than
speech. Language must depend on some physical mode for
its acquisition and use but that mode need not be limited to
sound. The mode can be visual, as in signing, or even touch
as in languages used by the deaf-blind
 Sign Language: A True Language without
Speech

Complete and
Incomplete Sign
2.1

Languages
Signers of such sign languages as
American Sign Language, French Sign Other sign languages may be incomplete
Language, British Sign Language, and s y n t a c t i c a l l y o r l i m i t e d i n t e r m s o f v o c a b u l a r y.
Such incomplete sign languages are typically
others can indeed communicate in sign found in developing countries, although in even
whatever is expressed in speech. A some developed nations, sign language may
sentence like that shown at the end of the s u ff e r f r o m d e f i c i e n c i e s . F o r e x a m p l e s i g n
language in Japan.
previous section can be expressed
through all of these languages.
 Sign Language: A True Language without
Speech

Speeds of Signing and

Speaking Sentences are
2.1

Comparable
Signer communicates at about the same
speed as a speaker does, The speed at
which signers produce sentences (more
precisely the ideas which underlie
sentences) in a signed conversation
tends to be the same as that at which
speakers produce sentences in a spoken PROCESSING
conversation. LANGUAGE
I N F O R M AT I O N
GESTURE FROM HEARING PEOPLE ARE SIGNS BUT
DO NOT FORM A LANGUAGE

Gesture ≠ Language

01
Gesture from hearing people do not form a
language. The gestures are very limited,
• gesture using arms, head, torso

2.2
being restricted to certain speech GESTURE • facial gestures
W/O 02
occasions or specialized communities. SPEECH • iconic gestures
• specialized gestures
GESTURE • beat
Gestures may be complex, they are only W/ 04
SPEECH • iconic gestures
collections of signs which are limited in
scope. Nevertheless, gestures do play an
06
important part in the communication of
hearing persons and they occur both with
and without speech.
 2.3

Types of sign language:

speech-based
language and
independent of
Speech-
Based Sign
ordinary language.
--------------------------
Sign language based
on the speech of
ordinary language can
be of two different
kinds: one which
represents the
Languages
SPEECH-BASED SIGN LANGUAGES
Speech-based sign languages represent spoken words (or
their spelling) and the order of these words or morphemes
as they appear in ordinary spoken languages, such as
Swedish, English, and French.
morphemes of
speech and one which INDEPENDENT OF THE ORDINARY
represents spelling SPOKEN LANGUAGE
(orthography). Sign languages as American Sign Language and British
Sign Language which are not speech-based and not
mutually intelligible. Its developed their own words and
grammatical systems for the production and understanding
of sentences. We shall call these Independent sign
languages (ISLs).
 SPEECH-BASED SIGN LANGUAGES

Finger Spelling: Letter by

2.3

Letter
According to this system words are
represented by spelling them out letter by
letter in terms of individual signs, where
each sign represents a letter of the
alphabet,

Theoretically, finger spelling could be

learned as a native Ianguage. For example,
a deaf child being introduced to the finger
spelling for 'banana' can learn to identify
the sequence of letter-by-Ietter signs as a
whole image, the totality of which has the
meaning of banana.
 PLACE’s NAME
MARY JOHN ELIZABET
H

PERSON’s NAME

San Francisco Berlin London

 SPEECH-BASED SIGN LANGUAGES

Morpheme by Morpheme (MnM) Sign

2.3

Languages: 'Signing Essential English' and

'Seeing Exact English
Signing Essential English and Seeing Exact
English are typical of this type of sign system, most
of which were created in the USA around the
1960s, before the interest in and widespread
acceptance of ASL. These language systems
follow in sign the exact linear flow of spoken words.

The learner learning such a system need not know

the speech-based language on which the system
was created in order to learn it.
 A D VA N TA G E S D I S A D VA N TA G E S

1. Learner simultaneously acquires the

morphology and syntax of both the sign
and related speech-based language.
2. Easier for an adult hearing person to
learn an MnM than an ISL.
1. Children do not learn MnM easily.
2. MnM is not preferred by the deaf
community.
 INDEPENDENT SIGN LANGUAGES (ISLs)
SUCH AS AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE

Characteristics of
2.4

The signs of an
ISL
Word Structure (Morphology)
Independent Sign
English derives many words from Language (ISL) can be
'compare', such as ‘compared',
analysed into three basic
'compares', 'comparing', and 'comparison'.
Such morphological changes also have components:
their equivalents in an ISL such as 1. Band configuration:
American Sign Language. Adjusting the the shape that the
movement of a sign by changing the hand forms
speed or tension or rate of repetition gives 2. Place of articulation:
ASL signers the ability to derive nouns where in space the
from verbs, such as 'comparison' from hand is formed
'compare', as well as to produce
3. Movement: how the
derivations which are unique to ASL.
hand moves
 INDEPENDENT SIGN LANGUAGES (ISLs) SUCH AS AMERICAN SIGN
LANGUAGE
The Syntax of a Typical ISL: American Sign Language
(ASL)
2.4

Independent sign languages has been conducted
on American Sign Language. In a speech-based
language, individual words are structured together
into sentences according to syntactic rules, the
heart of the grammar of a language. ASL has rules
which govern the relationship between individual
signs in a sentence.
While the words and morphemes of sentences in
languages such as Signing Exact English are
signed in the air on a sort of imaginary two-
dimensional blackboard and in a word-by-word
linear sequence, ASL sentences are radically
different. They are not linear sequences but three-
dimensional creations.
EXAMPLE
 INDEPENDENT SIGN LANGUAGES (ISLs) SUCH AS AMERICAN SIGN
LANGUAGE
Dialects and Foreign Accents in Sign Language
2.4

There may even be strong dialectic differences

within a language from region to region within a
country. For example, signers from Paris have
difficulty in understanding signers from Lyon, and
vice-versa. American Sign Language and British
Sign Language (BSL) are not mutually intelligible.
American Sign Language actually has more in
common with French Sign Language than with
British Sign Language because ASL was derived
from French Sign Language early in the nineteenth
century.
 There is no universal sign language

This might be a good place to emphasize that, contrary

to common belief, there is no universal sign language.
There are some similarities among languages, but not
many. There are a multitude of sign languages, complete
and incomplete.

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Any questions?

Thank
You