The influence of sign language on writing: on cross-modal transfer in texts by DHH learners

Literacy is an important competence not only in a scholarly setting, but also for actively taking part in a literate society. For deaf users of a sign language, however, the 'written word' is challenging for the following two reasons. First, signers of a face-to- face, unwritten visual language need to transfer their message into a written modality. Second, as there is no widely accepted standardized written form for signed languages, the code which they must use is that of the written representation of an oral language, which is often a second language (L2) to users of a sign language. The study reported here addresses these challenges with written German data collected from Swiss German Sign Language (DSGS) deaf signers. The variations found in these written German texts are the result not only of second language acquisition processes common to both hearing and deaf L2 learners of German, but also of cross-modal (visual/spatial – acoustic/oral) interferences unique to deaf L2 learners of the oral language. The crossmodal source of non-typical constructions in sentence structure of the written German texts of the deaf signers is the focus of this study. Especially relevant here is the cross-modal variation in regard to information structure. Signed languages use syntactic strategies to focus linguistic information that are different from those used for spoken languages like German. The data from this study show that these sign strategies are also being transferred into the written German texts of the deaf DSGS signers.