?A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS ON MOTHER-CHILD INTERACTION OF TWO DEAF CHILDREN

Abstract

The present study is a pragmatic analysis on mother-child interaction of two 4-year-old deaf children. One pair was of deaf mother and deaf child, and another was of hearing mother and deaf child. The deaf mother and child used sign language, finger spelling, pantomimic gestures in addition to oral language in their interaction, while the hearing mother depend exclusively on oral language in relating to her deaf child. Each pair was observed during free plays with VTR, and the protocols of their communication were analysed. The results of analysis on behavioral characteristics are as follows: 1) The manual child was coherent in maintaining the central theme of communication. 2) The manual child showed higher abilities in spontaneously initiating communication with others. 3) The oral child was superior to manual child in use of oral language. The former produced more two word utterances than the latter. However, this difference seems to superficial in view of their total communication skills including pragmatic conditions. 4) The manual child aiso exhibited such behavior as to make fun of her mother by language. In other words, he can look objectively the relation between mother herself, predict her mother's response, and enjoy herself in obtaining that response by language. It was suggested that those difference of communication modes between the oral and manual deaf children depend upon early initiation of manual communication than the children's personality factors. That is, early acceptance and production of locutionary act by manual communication allows the child to initiate communicational behavior and to elaborate its skills. On the other hand, the oral method puts a child in a "language training" situation in which communication tends to lose its primary purpose and becomes unnatural. Further, there is a tendency that only surface words or sentences are acquired in those "training" conditions. The acquired language would lack illocutionary forces which indicate communicative intentions. As a result, the child often exhibits simple repetition of his mother's utterances, or utters something which illocutionary forces are ambiguous. The early acceptance of locution by using manual language provides another abvantage in the manual child who can easily comprehend higher locution as "reasoning", and this would play an important role on the social development of the child.