Deaf children with spoken language bilingualism: Professional guidance to parents

ABSTRACT

13% of deaf children in the UK use more than one spoken language. Parents of deaf children from bilingual backgrounds must decide whether to communicate with their child using more than one spoken language, with or without a signed language(s) as well. As most deaf children are born to hearing parents with little or no knowledge of deafness, professional guidance received during this decision-making process is critical. This study examined the beliefs of professionals on the ability of a deaf child to acquire two spoken languages and the advice professionals give to parents considering spoken language bilingualism for their deaf child. 108 professionals who work with deaf children in the UK (50 Teachers of the Deaf [ToDs], 47 speech and language therapists [SLTs] and 11 audiologists) completed an online questionnaire between the 24th May 2019 and the 1st July 2019. Most participants believed deaf children can achieve spoken language bilingualism and would advise parents to speak in their home language, regardless of the parents’ English proficiency. However, audiologists were 11 times more likely than SLTs to report linguistic confusion, and ToDs at least 11 times more likely than SLTs to report reduced proficiency in English and the home language because of bilingualism. ToDs and SLTs were found to play a key role in bilingual parents’ decision-making process. Consequently, there is a need for specific training and interprofessional learning to ensure parents receive consistent evidence-based advice.

KEYWORDS:

• Deafness
• bilingualism
• multilingualism
• professional guidance

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for funding this study. We would also like to thank all the professionals who participated in our study. We are very grateful for their participation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/P00072/X to E.W.].

Notes on contributors

Emily Wright

Emily Wright is a PhD student at the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading. She is researching the decision-making process of parents who decide whether to raise their deaf child with two spoken languages, as well as the cognitive and language abilities in deaf children with spoken language bilingualism. The PhD is being supervised by Prof. Ludovica Serratrice and Prof. Vesna Stojanovik, and is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Prior to starting her PhD, Emily qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist and completed a master’s degree in Language Sciences specialising in multilingualism. Twitter: @EmilyWright_SLT

Vesna Stojanovik

Vesna Stojanovik is Professor of Clinical Linguistics at the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading. She teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate speech and language therapy programmes. She is the vice-president of the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (since 2018). Vesna has published internationally in the field of developmental disorders, focusing on language and communication development in individuals with developmental disorders. Twitter: @StojanovikV

Ludovica Serratrice

Ludovica Serratrice has qualifications in simultaneous interpretation, language and literature, and linguistics. After obtaining her PhD at the University of Edinburgh with a dissertation on the bilingual acquisition of Italian and English in pre-school children, she moved to the University of Manchester where she worked for 16 years conducting research on monolingual and bilingual acquisition and lecturing on the BSc Speech and Language Therapy degree. In 2016 Ludovica moved to the University of Reading where she holds a professorship in bi-multilingualism and teaches on the MSci and MSc Speech and Language Therapy degree programmes, she is also a Professor II at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway. Her research interests include language acquisition and processing in pre-school and school-age children, and she is passionate about co-producing research with teachers and speech and language therapists working with bilingual learners. Twitter: @ludoserratrice