Re: Do the prelinguistically deaf think before they are taught language?

You have just asked an extremely important question,and one which definitely 
needs to be answered, because there is a lot of misunderstanding on this 
issue.  

All human beings are born with the brain capability for speech, ever since the 
species Homo Sapiens developed millions of years ago. Before that, there was 
the species Homo Erectus, and they did not have the capability of speech or the 
capability to produce speech sounds. It is, therefore, instructive to 
understand how Homo Erectus communicated.  

According to the distinguished linguist Merlin Donald, Homo Erectus 
communicated in a MIMETIC form of communication -- purely in visual-gestural 
form, because Homo Erectus could not think or communicate in speech sounds 
(phonetic sounds, and spoken language phonemes). Yes, Homo Erectus could, and 
did think, and over time, developed what is now called "ASL" in the United 
States.  Any group of individuals who cannot access speech sounds will 
eventually form a NONPHONEMIC mode of communication, to interact with each 
other, and in the USA, those who could not access speech sounds at all, due to 
prelinguistic deafness, did the same thing that Homo Erectus did, because that 
form of communication is still the "backup system" in everyone, which is used 
when phonemic language communication is difficult or impossible.  

Homo Erectus did form a social-cultural interactive society, based on the same 
nonphonemic form of communication as the higher apes, but at a somewhat higher 
level, since Homo Erectus had a larger, human brain. This is known as MIMETIC 
CULTURE.  For those humans who necessarily cannot access the sounds of human 
speech, the same is called (wrongly) today "Deaf Culture," but Deaf Culture is 
actually MIMETIC Culture -- a societal group based on nonphonemic 
communication.  It just happens that the prelingually deaf group is the only 
group in society that could not access the sounds of human speech even with the 
most powerful hearing aids available, until the cochlear implant was developed 
and approved for use to restore that ability only a few years ago.

In MIMETIC culture, yes, the people do think, and they think in "silent movies" 
(in strict time sequence, and with gestures representing concepts, not speech 
sounds or words).  Such individuals are necessarily restricted in communication 
and are more concrete in orientation, since they only perceive the world 
visually, and their mimetic signs can only represent visual information.
For example, in phonemic form, the word "God" has a description, but that's 
only for those who have phonemic capability.  In "ASL" the sign for "God" is 
simply pointing upward to "something up there" in the sky that cannot be seen, 
and therefore cannot be described.

When Homo Sapiens developed speech capability, there was, of course, a 
transition from Homo Erectus Mimetic Culture and communication to the phonemic 
language we use today.  That transition can be seen in the very oldest 
cultures, such as the Australian aborigines, and some of the Native American 
tribal groups, and the peoples of the island nations, who use mostly mimetic 
artistic and dance communications, and have very basic phonemic language 
communication, mostly using spoken words with a lot of vowels and very few 
consonants, and many of those words replicate the sounds made by animals, or 
environmental sounds.

No one can remember how they "learned language." ("Language" as a term, is 
based on "lingua," meaning "tongue" -- Language, and Linguistics is based on 
phonemic communication, not nonphonemic communication).  Human beings with 
normal hearing ability learn all of their speech sounds subconsciously by the 
age of nine months old. Do you remember how you were "thinking" before age nine 
months old?  Nope!  No one remembers that period in their lives.  

The reason is that after acquiring speech sounds, and some of the basic speech 
patterns, the brain of a Homo Sapiens (you) automatically transfers the speech 
sounds "file" to a reserved section of your brain in the left cerebral 
hemisphere, and those sounds are "locked in" forever, to become the basics for 
your communication from that time onward. You use that information for your 
phonemic communication for the rest of your life, and you can't imagine what it 
is like to live without phonemic language.  In fact, even when you try to watch 
a mimetic performance, such as Marcel Marceau, or a silent movie, your brain is 
giving you phonemic language thoughts all during that time -- it is almost 
impossible for a phonemically-based individual to suspend phonemic thinking and 
function in a purely mimetic way of thinking.  It is possible, but it requires 
people to completely give up thinking in speech sounds, and most people cannot 
do this very well, or completely.

Is it possible to give a prelingually deaf individual the basic knowledge of 
phonemes of phonemic language, even if they cannot hear speech sounds at all?  
The answer is YES, and it has been done successfully for many years, and thus 
those individuals have been able to access HUMAN LANGUAGE, since human Homo 
Sapiens are the only species on Earth that communicate in phonemic language.
Throughout history, many attempts have been made to develop methods to teach 
phonemic language to "deaf" individuals. Those who have had the ability (with 
or without assistive devices) to supplement lipreading with some speech sound 
information have always done well in learning phonemic language.

Also throughout history, the ones who have not had the ability to hear any 
speech sounds are the ones who had to be incarcerated in asylum institutions, 
away from the public and academic schooling, since they could not possibly 
fully learn phonemic language, and those places (which still exist) are the 
places that restrict education to socio-cultural mimetic communication, and are 
not academic schools, since the people in them cannot communicate in phonemic 
language.

Yet, over time, methods were developed to give deaf individuals more and better 
phonemic language understanding.  The most recent breakthrough came in the 
1960s at Gallaudet University, when R. Orin Cornett, Ph.D. developed the Cued 
Language system (which had been used, generally, for many years in France), and 
that system uses one hand to provide 100% complete visual phonemic information 
to anyone, regardless of level of hearing loss, as complete assisted 
lipreading.  The indviduals who utilize this communication mode function 
completely in phonemic language, and are in complete equality to those with 
normal hearing ability, except that they still cannot hear their own voices or 
compare their voices to others, so they don't have clear and understandable 
speech.  And, they still need an assistant to access interpersonal spoken 
communications.

The technological breakthrough that solves the problems completely for 
prelingually deaf individuals is the cochlear implant.  With this device, all 
persons in the prelingually deaf category function as persons with mild hearing 
loss, and they can access speech sounds independently, and also hear their own 
voices and voices of others to develop clearer speech, without needing 
assistance from others. If the implant is provided at a very young age, the 
deaf children grow up as mildly hard of hearing children, and do not EVER need 
to communicate in a Mimetic form of communication for interpersonal 
communications.

Now, a lot of people are trying to block the cochlear implant, because they 
want to "study" (or earn money from) those deaf people who are without phonemic 
language.  This is absolutely wrong, and constitutes deliberate abuse upon 
persons who wish to become "fully human", and who wish to utilize the human-
only phonemic language abilities in their own human brains. In my opinion, it 
is also a violation of the human rights of the parents of deaf children to try 
to stop those parents from giving their deaf children the ability to utilize 
phonemic human-only language. 

No one who has the ability to communicate in phonemic language ever "needs" 
mimetic communication -- that was substantially abandoned when Homo Erectus 
became Homo Sapiens. The only group of humans that has been in mimetic mode 
since that time has been the prelinguistically deaf group, and now they also 
have the ability to join the rest of the human race, now that cochlear implants 
have been perfected and approved for their use.  Those who are eligible for the 
cochlear implant should be permitted to get one at as early an age as possible 
and to receive full auditory-verbal training to catch up with what they have 
missed prior to the implant being received and activated.  Those who are not 
eligible for the cochlear implant can often receive the newer brainstem 
implant.  Those who cannot receive either implant still have the option of full 
phonemic language ability through the use of the Cued Language (formerly known 
as "Cued Speech") assisted lipreading system.

As of the 1960s, with the development of Cued Language, NO prelinguistically 
deaf person has "needed" to communicate in a purely mimetic form of "signed" 
communication.  That was about 30 years ago, and it is true. Unfortunately, 
this information has been suppressed by those who wish to retain nonphonemic 
individuals in society for their own self-interest (researchers, asylum 
institution personnel, ASL interpreters, segregated educational institutions 
and social services centers, and others that get "free government grant money" 
for researching or serving those who have little or no access to phonemic 
language).  

The emphasis should be on welcoming these special individuals to the rest of 
human society and human phonemic language, after such a long period of time, 
actually millions of years.  It is time to welcome the final group of mimetic 
communication-restricted people to general society and phonemic language 
communication. And, today, mimetic communication in "signs" 
and mimetic segregated culture, can be shared by anyone, since there are 
classes in this form of interaction, and it does not depend at all on whether a 
person has the ability to hear or not.  In fact, the vast majority of people in 
the USA at this time, who have learned the ASL nonphonemic mode of 
communication, are persons with normal hearing ability.  At the same time, 
those with hearing loss, including the prelinguistically deaf, are sharing the 
benefits of human-only phonemic language and learning to speak clearly, with 
cochlear implants.

For more information, go to the website at http://www.oraldeafed.org and click 
on "free videos." Enter your name and address, and order their free 60-minute 
videotape, and it will be sent to you.  You will be able to see the 
prelinguistically deaf children of today, not of the past.  

If you contact the National Cued Speech Association (NCSA.org) you can get 
information and videotapes about the Cued Language method, which can be learned 
by any person with normal hearing ability in about 18 HOURS, and which is used 
mandatorily in the European regular academic school systems to include 
prelinguistically deaf students in regular education. The system is available 
for all major world languages, and shows 100% of phonemic sounds of language 
completely visually, to anyone.