Daigle, D., A.-M. Parisot et C. Plaza Pust (2007)
«The metalinguistic transfer hypothesis and the bilingual approach in
deaf education», colloque "Cross-modal bilingualism: New perspectives
on variation and evaluation", 6th International Symposium on Bilingualism
(ISB6), Hamburg, 1er juin.
Résumé :
The bilingual approach in deaf children's education is now used in many different
countries. This approach is based on the use of sign language as the classroom
language and, in some programs, as a study subject. One of the main premises of
this approach relates to the hypothetical beneficial effect of sign language in
reading/writing acquisition. If indeed different studies have shown a positive
correlation between sign language competency and written performances (Padden
et Ramsey, 1998; Hoffmeister, 2000; Strong et Prinz, 2000), the nature of the
relation between languages is not clearly defined. One hypothesis that could take
account for this link is founded on Cummins interdependent theory (1991) and could
be named the metalinguistic transfer hypothesis. Instead of looking at the linguistic
competencies that could account for reading/writing acquisition, this hypothesis
would explain reading/writing acquisition in terms of metalinguistic transfer
of knowledge initially from the sign language to the written language and would
allow eventually the opposite transfer. The purpose of this presentation is to
present two different bilingual programs, one held in Berlin, the other one in
Montréal. After presenting the main characteristics of the programs and
the longitudinal research results gathered until now, we will analyse both educational
setting in the light of the metalinguistic transfer hypothesis.