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2000

Code switching: American Sign Language and

cued English
Peter Hauser

Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.rit.edu/article

Recommended Citation
Peter Hauser, Code switching: American Sign Language and cued English, In M.Metzger (Ed.), Bilingualism and Idientity in Deaf
Communities (2000)

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 An Analysis of Codeswitching:

American Sign Language and Cued English

Peter C. Hauser

Sociolinguistic studies on the codeswitching that occurs when Ameri-

can Sign Language (ASL)and English come into contact have claimed that
the codeswitching is qualitatively different from spoken language code-
switching (e.g., Davis 1989, 1990; Lucas and Valli 1989, 199;2;).These
studies have focused on the contact between users of ASL and users of
spoken English. However, the codeswitching between English in a visual
modality-cued American English (hereafter cued English)':""and ASL
has not been studied. This chapter focuses on the codeswitching of a ten-
year-old bilingual deaf girl who is fluent in ASL and cued English.!
This chapter provides descriptive examples of ASL-cued English code-
switching as well as a discussion on social motivations for and functions
of codeswitching. In the first section of this chapter, studies on spoken
language codeswitching are introduced, followed by a second section dis-
cussing codeswitching in the Deaf community.2 The third section includes
a description of cued English and a review of previous studies on cued lan-
guages. Following the review of literature, evidence of ASL-cued English

I wish to thank Hilary Franklin, Angela Hauser, Claire Klossner, and Melanie
Metzger for their help in various parts of this study. I also thank the participants
and their family for permission to videotape their interactions and for sharing
information and providing previous video clips and documentation used in this
study.
1. Some authors use the term code-mixing when referring to intra sentential
codeswitching or borrowing when referring to single morpheme/lexeme switches
from one language within an utterance to another language. (Additionally, some
authors use code switching as two separate words, whereas others use codeswitch-
ing as one word or use code-switching.) In this chapter, I use codeswitching to re-
fer to both intrasentential and intersentential codeswitches as well as borrowing.
2..In this chapter deaf refers to the audiological condition of hearing loss and
Deaf to social collectivities; Woodward (1972.) first made this distinction.

43
codeswitching is demonstrated and compared with examples of code- EXAMPLE 2

switching in spoken languages. The results of this chapter's study dem-

You know they walk que e/las se comen e/ aisle comp/eto.
onstrate that codeswitching between ASL and cued English follows a sim-
("in such a way that they take up the whole")
ilar pattern found in spoken language codeswitching.
It is generally held that an individual must know at least two languages
in order to be able to codeswitch. Breitborde (1983, 5) stated that "the
CODESWITCHING
principal behavior through which bilingualism is expressed is code switch-
ing." Grosjean describes the everyday nature of a bilingual as follows:
Codeswitching occurs when a bilingual or multilingual individual
switches from one language to another. The term is used when identifying In their everyday lives, bilinguals find themselves at various points along
alternations of linguistic varieties within the same conversation (Myers- a situational continuum, bilinguals are in a total monolingual mode in
Scotton 1993). Romaine explains that codeswitching occurs when "the that they are speaking (or writing) to monolinguals of one-or-the-other
items in question form part of the same speech act. They are tied together of the languages that they know. At the other end of the continuum,
prosodically as well as by semantic and syntactic relations equivalent to bilinguals find themselves in a bilingual language mode in that they are
those that join passages in a single speech act" (1995, iii). Codeswitching communicating with bilinguals who share their two languages and with
is commonly found in bilingual communities and has been studied by an- whom they normally mix languages (i.e., code switch and borrow).
thropologists, psychologists, sociologists, and linguists. Codeswitching (1982, 309)
can be a communicative resource because it reveals the speakers' sensi-
tivity to both formal and functional aspects of language (Grosjean 1982; When referring to bilinguals (or multilinguals), most researchers do
Gumperz 1982; Heller 1988; Lanza 1992; Poplack 1981; Romaine 1995). not consider them to have native fluency in both languages (Baetsens-
Codeswitching has been found to be used by children (two years old or Beardsmore 1986; Grosjean 1982, 1992; Hakuta 1986; Haugen 1969;
older) who are from bilingual families (Boeschoten and Verhoeven 1987; Myers-Scotton 1993; Romaine 1995; Zentella 1997). It is rare to find a
Fantini 1985; Lanza 1992; McClure 1981; Zentella 1997). Children in bilingual who can pass as a native user of both languages (Grosjean 1992;
bilingual communities do not only learn two languages but also the social Zentella 1997). Zentella (1997) claims that it is more accurate to speak
rules regarding when and where the languages may be used and how to of a "bilinguallmultidialectal repertoire" that consists of a spectrum of
codeswitch within a single utterance (Zentella 1997). Numerous studies linguistic codes. The linguistic spectrum ranges from standard use to non-
have demonstrated that there are no qualitative differences between chil- standard dialects and from the language in which an individual is most
dren's and older bilinguals' codeswitching patterns (e.g., Lanza 1992), fluent to other languages the individual may use only with specific inter-
whereas others have found developmental patterns of codeswitching (e.g., locutors or for specific purposes. Zentella defined bilingualism as the abil-
Zentella 1997). ity to produce meaningful utterances in two languages (which is also the
Codeswitching can occur at the boundaries of complete sentences definition used in this chapter). As in other codeswitching studies, native
(intersententia/) or within sentence boundaries (intrasententia/). The fol- fluency in both languages was not a prerequisite.
lowing are examples of intersentential (example I) and intrasentential Language proficiency influences an individual's ability to codeswitch.
(example 2) Spanish-English codeswitching from Zentella (1997, 80): Zentella found that the overall pattern of her subjects' language choices
EXAMPLE I
were related to their language proficiency; however, "the choice of lan-
guage in a particular setting depends on a myriad of factors involving the
Si, pero /e hab/o en espano/. When I don't know something, I'll talk to participants, the setting, and the social and communicative goals" (1997,
her in English. 87). Children in her study who were Spanish-dominant often would start
("Yes, but I talk to her in Spanish.") their utterances in Spanish and move to their weaker language (English)

44 : PET E R c. H A USE R ASL and Cued EnK/ish Codeswitchinl! : 4~

with bilinguals. For example, a six-year-old (Paca) who was talking to served that Spanish-English bilinguals switched to Spanish for idiomatic
Zentella (Z) changed from her dominant language to English (88): pauses. In Zentella's (1997) study, many community members stated that
they codeswitch when they were at a loss for words. She termed this type
EXAMPLE 3
of codeswitch a crutch because, just as crutches can help a mobility-
PACA:Dame una cura. ("Give me a Band-Aid.") impaired individual to keep walking, a codeswitch can help speakers to
Z: ~Pa(-ra) que? ("For what?") keep talking when they are at a loss for words in one language (98).
PACA:For my hand. Kachru (1977) noted that Hindi-English bilinguals codeswitch to re-
peat their utterances in order to avoid possible vagueness or ambiguity.
Zentella pointed out that Paca codeswitched to English for several pos-
Bentahila (1983) observed situations in which the speaker attempted-
sible reasons: (a) for emphasis, (b) to recognize Zentella's U.S.-born iden-
with difficulty-to explain something in one language before codeswitch-
tity, or (c) to show off her knowledge of English -the "prestige language"
ing and start explaining again in the other language. Bentahila claimed
(1997,88).
that repeating utterances in another language is not always used for add-
Codeswitching can also occur because one language has an advantage
ing clarity; instead it often occurs because the speaker wants to achieve a
over the other. For example, in some situations, one language has a more
suitable term for what the speaker is trying to express, and this motivates certain effect, such as emphasis. This type of codeswitching was also ob-
served in Spanish-English bilinguals (Gumperz 1976; Redlinger 1976;
the speaker to codeswitch. Clyne (1967) studied German-English bilin-
Timm 1975; Zentella 1997) and in Hindi-English and Slovenian-German
guals and observed that sometimes a speaker switches to the other lan-
bilinguals (Gumperz 1976). Zentella (1997) found codeswitching for clar-
guage before the particular term is used. He named this type of code-
switching anticipational triggering because the need for a specific term in ity and for emphasis was most frequent among the children in her study.
Codeswitching can also occur within utterances when one wants to
the other language triggers the switch before the term is reached. In other
make a comment unrelated to the main topic (Bentahila 1983; Zentella
situations, a speaker may codeswitch when the particular term is reached
and then continue using that term's language. Clyne named this type of 1997), or to recite a quotation (Bentahila 1983; Gumperz 1976; Timm
triggering consequential triggering. 1975). The following example of a topic shift is found in Zentella (1997,
Bentahila (1983) studied codeswitching in Morocco, where it is com- 103): "She works a lot. Ay, tengo que ir pa(-ra e-)l bano" ("[Ugh] I have
mon among those who are fluent in both French and Arabic (e.g., Lahlou to go to the bathroom"). Zentella also found codeswitching to be used to
1989; Heath 1989). In informal conversations in which all participants check for approval, gain someone's attention, or verify the interlocutor's
were bilingual, codeswitching often occurred both intersententially and knowledge of what they were about to refer to. Gumperz (1976) found
intrasententially. Bentahila observed that both anticipational and conse- examples of codeswitching for attention from four language groups
around the world. When Puerto Rican children in New York asked a
quential triggering occurred with the Moroccan bilinguals. Bentahila iden-
tified some external factors that provoke codeswitching. He found that question and. then answered it themselves, the answer sometimes was in
Moroccans who have lexical access to many of the same terms in both their other language (Zentella 1997). Data trom Bentahila's (1983) ob-
French and Arabic often use terms from one language rather than another servations of different types of codeswitching of Arabic-French bilinguals
when referring to certain topics. For example, the Moroccan bilinguals in Morocco can be found in the "Evidence of Codeswitching" section of
this chapter.
codeswitched to French when using technical terms and concepts associ-
ated with Europe and codeswitched to Arabic for numbers, dates, times,
insults, and swearing. The Moroccan bilinguals also switched to Arabic
for stereotyped phrases that serve as fillers to avoid a pause.
Codeswitching has also been observed in pauses when the speaker is
unsure how to continue. Gumperz and Hernandez-Chavez (1975) also ob-

46 PETER C. HAUSER ASL and Cued English Codeswitching 4-7

 CODESWITCHING MODELS The interlocutors Land T were able to speak both English and Spanish.
In this situation, the language they used depended on the dominant lan-
Situational and Metaphorical Codeswitching
guage of those they were addressing. When T and L spoke to each other,
Blom and Gumperz (1972) identified two types of codeswitching in the they used English unless they wanted to involve an adult in the conversa-
1960s while they were studying linguistic variation and use in a small tion. In other words, when the situation involved only the two children, the
town in Norway. They claimed that codeswitching occurs for social rea- language was English; when the situation involved adults, the language
sons and depends on (a) who the speakers are, (b) their social identities was Spanish. On the other hand, the conversation between Paca and Zen-
and social relations with others when speaking, (c) how the two codes are tella (mentioned earlier in the chapter) is an example of metaphorical
used, and (d) how the social identities are brought into the social rela- codeswitching (1997). Two bilinguals were communicating with each
tionship. They noticed that the northern Norwegian standard language, other in the same situation using two languages.
Bokmal, was used in social relationships characterized by regional values Myers-Scotton (1993) stated that the work of Blom and Gumperz had
and that the local dialect, Ranamal, was used in social relationships char- an enormous impact on codeswitching research because it has provided
acterized by local values. The merchants were linked to both the locals researchers a suitable framework for analyzing codeswitching. Myers-
and nonlocals and were found to codeswitch often. The two types of Scotton observed that the majority of codeswitching literature mentions
codes witching they identified were situational codeswitching and meta- and/or follows Blom and Gumperz's framework and that "much of the
phorical codeswitching. work done on [codeswitching] would not have been done at all without
Situational codeswitching depends on a situation. On the other hand, the stimulation of [Blom and Gumperz]" (1993, 55). However, she points
metaphorical codeswitching is independent of the situation and tends to out that it is difficult to pin down exactly what is intended by situational
be a short codeswitch between languages. In situational codeswitching, and metaphorical codeswitching. She claims that it is "especially unclear
one language is used in one social situation, and the other language is used how many and diverse might be the motivations included under meta-
in another social situation. In metaphorical switching, the switching oc- phorical code switching. . . [and] situational code switching is never re-
curs in the same situation with the same individuals. Blom and Gumperz ally very well defined" (1993, 52). Auer (1984, 91) also criticized Blom
(1972) stated that metaphorical switching allows one speaker to share and Gumperz' model:
two or more different values with the same interlocutor.
[T]he distinction between situational and metaphorical code switching
An example of situational codeswitching from Zentella (1997) in-
must be criticized from both ends; at the "situational code switching"
volved a situation in which an eight-year-old Puerto Rican girl (L) in New
end, the relationship between language choice and situation features is
York pushed a five-year-old boy (T) off her bike. The boy tells the nearby
adults about what L did: less rigid, more open to renegotiation, than a one-to-one relationship,
at the "metaphorical code switching" end, things are less individualis-
EXAMPLE 4 tic, less .independent of the situation. !he distinction collapses and
should be replaced by a continuum. (1984, 91)
L to T: Get off, Timmy, get off.
T to adults: Ella me di6! ("She hit me.") Myers-Scotton (1993) also finds fault with the writing of Blom and
L to T: iPor que TV me diste! ("Because YOU hit me!") Gumperz, Gumperz (1982), and other studies that have followed Gum-
T to L: Liar! perz's lead in that they use primarily a descriptive approach, such as the
Adult to L: ~Por que? ("Why?")-[interrupted by L] better-taxonomy approach, to analyze different functions of codeswitch-
L to adult: Por que el me di6, por eso. El siempre me estd dando cuando ing. She argues that a theory that can be generalized across different in-
me ve. ("Because he hit me, that's why. He's always hitting me teractions would be more beneficial than viewing each social interaction
whenever he sees me.") independent from others. She claims that codeswitching "serves the same

48 PETER c. HAUSER ASL and Cued English Codeswitching 49

general60ciopsychological functions everywhere" (Myers-Scotton 1993, for intraethnic-group encounters in Nairobi], the guard acknowledges
J)' and she developed a markedness model that attempts to explain social (and makes salient) their shared ethnic-group membership. But when
motivations for codeswitching across different languages and situations. a second visitor appears, the guard addresses him in Swahili, indexing
again the more neutral RO set for such encounters.(1993, 87)
Markedness Model
The markedness model postulates that codeswitching is not influenced
Myers-Scotten developed a markedness model with an eye to provid- by situations as found in Blom and Gumperz (1972). Instead, codeswitch-
ing a framework for describing sociopsychological motivations for code- ing is a choice that a speaker makes. The guard did not have to switch to
switching in all languages and situations. The theory behind this model Luyia even though he recognized the visitor was from his ethnic group. He
proposes that speakers have a markedness metric that "enables speakers switched to Luyia because he chose to use the unmarked code for intra-
to access all code choices as more or less unmarked or marked for the ex- ethnic-group encounters to acknowledge their shared ethnic membership.
change type in which they occur" (Myers-Scotton 1993, 80). Although the Under the markedness model, all code choices can be explained in terms
markedness metric is considered a universal cognitive ability, the marked- of speaker motivations. There are four codeswitching types:
ness of a code has a normative basis within a community. In other words,
1. Sequential unmarked codeswitching: codeswitching as a sequence
speakers are conscious of what code is expected (unmarked) or unex- of unmarked choices
pected (marked). If the marked code is used, it has a shock value not just
2. Unmarked codeswitching: codeswitching itself as the unmarked
because of the language used but also because of the change from the un- choice
marked choice.
3. Marked codeswitching: codeswitching as the marked choice
The markedness of a code depends on the rights-and-obligations sets
4. Exploratory codeswitching: codeswitching as an exploratory
(RO sets) between participants in a given interaction type. "Rights-and- choice
obligations sets are salient cultural biases that are associated with a spe-
cific language in a specific situation. The language choice itself exposes cul- Sequential unmarked codeswitching and unmarked codeswitching ul-
tural and/or personal values/biases, in other words, the language choice timately have related motivations; however, sequential unmarked code-
(or code switch) indexes to a specific RO set" (Myers-Scotton 1993, 84). switching is triggered by changes in the situation factors, whereas in un-
Myers-Scotton illustrates the concept of markedness and RO sets by de- marked codeswitching, the situational factors remain more or less the
scribing conversations between a guard in IBM's Nairobi head office and same. Myers-Scotton uses the guard conversation to illustrate sequential
visitors to the office:
unmarked codeswitching: "[W]hen the security guard discovers that the
With no other information than the visitor's appearance, the most sa- enquirer comes from his own ethnic group, the content of the factor 'eth-
lient factor determining the guard's selection of an unmarked choice nicity' changes from 'unknown' to 'shared,' and the unmarked RO set
for enacting this encounter is whether the visitor appears to be a Ken- changes from that holding between strangers to that between ethnic
yan African. The guard decides this is the visitor's identity and so he brethren" (1993, II4).
speaks Swahili, the unmarked choice for the unmarked RO set between On the other hand, unmarked codeswitching occurs in a conversation
two Kenyan Africans in their respective roles. . . . Had the visitor been of at least two bilinguals (or multilinguals) in which the switching is of-
a Mzungu ("European"), the guard would have tried English.. . . Since ten intrasentential. Myers-Scotton claims that "the interaction has to be
the guard's apparent motivation is to convey nothing more than "busi- of a type in which speakers wish to symbolize the dual memberships that
ness as usual" and a very neutral RO set between himself and the visi- such [codeswitching] calls up" (1993, II9). Many of the codeswitching
tor, Swahili is his choice to open the conversation. . . . By switching examples found in Zentella's study involved unmarked codeswitching,
from Swahili to Luyia [unmarked code indexing the unmarked RO set which Zentella described as the creation of "a style of discourse that is

5° PETER c. HAUSER ASL and Cued EnKtish Codeswitching 51

emblematic of their dual identity" (1997, 101). Poplack (1988) also stud- The language contact situation when ASL and English meet is qualita-
ied Puerto Rican communities in New York and found similar evidence of tively different from patterns found in spoken language contact (Lucas
unmarked codeswitching. and Valli 1989, 1991, 1992). Studies have shown that PSE does not fol-
Marked codeswitching involves making an unexpected code choice low the same linguistic patterns that are found in spoken pidgin languages
that does not index to the expected RO sets. Myers-Scotton (1993) pos- (Lucas and Valli 1992; Miihlhausler, 1986; Reilly and McIntire I980).
tulates that marked choices are made when a speaker is attempting to in- MCE is a signing system that is claimed by some to express English via a
crease or decrease the expected social distance between participants. signed medium. Studies have shown that MCE signs are not English
Marked codeswitching can be used to express authority or anger, to ex- words because they do not share the same phonological structure and do
clude others from a different ethnic group, or to simply add a stylistic ef- not equivalently present English morphology or syntax (Davidson, New-
fect. By moving away from the expected RO sets, the usage of a marked port, and Supalla 1996; Fleetwood and Metzger 1991, 1998; Johnson
choice has a message of its own. On the other hand, exploratory code- and Erting 1989; Johnson, Liddell, and Erting 1989j Kluwin 1981; Stack
switching is used when speakers are unclear of the unmarked RO sets. 1996; Supalla 1991; Swisher 1985).
When exploratory codeswitching is used, a speaker may attempt to be Lucas and Valli (1989, 1991, 1992) studied sociolinguistic factors that
neutral by avoiding committing to a single RO set. In situations in which influence ASL-English bilinguals' language use. They found a number of
a speaker does not have adequate proficiency in the unmarked choice, the situations in which deaf signers change their signing so that it is more
speaker might switch codes while apologizing for needing to switch. "English-like" (1992, 18). They termed this type of signing contact sign.
Contact sign is what many have referred to as PSE in earlier studies. Its
lexical forms are ASL signs with ASL semantics and functionsj however,
LANGUAGE CONTACT: AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE
sometimes the signs use English semantics and functions, such as the En-
AND SPOKEN ENGLISH
glish use of conjunctions and prepositional phrases. Mouthing of English
lexical items (sometimes with voice) occurs. Lucas and Valli's analysis
Almost all deaf individuals who use ASL also use written English to
demonstrated that contact sign involves a drastic morphemic and syntac-
communicate with others (e.g., via e-mail or TTY). Also, many have been tic reduction of both ASL and English. In their data (which involved re-
exposed to oral English through speech training and when communicat- cordings of interactions among ASL-English bilinguals), English inflec-
ing with hearing individuals who have minimal or no sign language knowl- tional and derivational morphology was nonexistent, and ASL inflectional
edge. Therefore, most deaf individuals who sign are bilingual (Grosjean and derivational morphology was virtually absent.
1992). When two ASL and English bilinguals interact (deaf-deaf, deaf- Lucas and Valli (1989) claimed that contact sign and spoken language
hearing, or hearing-hearing), their signing might be in ASL or in another
pidgins involve different features and that contact sign is not a pidgin
form such as Pidgin Sign English (PSEjWoodward 1972, 1973), manually
form of English. In their study, contact sign did not involve codeswitch-
coded English (MCEj Lee 1982), or contact sign (Lucas and Valli 1989,
ingj instead it involved an unusual type of ,mixing that is not observed in
1991, 1992). When ASL-English bilinguals interact,
spoken languages. English codes and ASL codes were observed to often
(D]epending on such factors as their knowledge of the two languages, mix simultaneously in contact signing. The results might be different if
the person(s) being addressed, the situation, the topic, the function of one studied codeswitching between two signed languages (for example,
the interaction, etc., they choose a base language-usually a form of between ASL and French Sign Language). Unfortunately, to date there are
sign language (the natural sign language of the community or a signed no empirical or qualitative studies of sign-to-sign codeswitching.
version of the spoken language). Then, according to various momen- As already mentioned, signed English does not preserve the linguistic
tary needs, and by means of signing, fingerspelling, mouthing, etc., features of English. As the next section explains, the phonetic features of
they bring in the other languages in the form of code switching or bor- English phonemes are replaced with visual phonetic features in cued En-
rowings. (Grosjean 1992, 312) glish, and the morphology and syntax of English, remain intact. This leads
52 : PETER c. HAUSER ASL and Cued English Codeswitching : 53
to ou'r central question: Is the codeswitching pattern in ASL and cued En- TABLEI. Phonetic Differences Between the Word Cat, Spoken and Cued

glish similar to that found in spoken-spoken language contact? A discus- Spoken Cued
sion on cued English is necessary before we can answer our question.
Ikl lrel Itl Ikl lrel Itl
+ consonantal - consonantal + consonantal + index + contact + index
CUED ENGLISH - sonorant + low - continuant + middle + neck + middle
- continuant - back - voice + open + open + ring
Cued Speech was developed by Cornett (1967) when he was a vice - voice - tense + coronal - round - round + little
+ back - round + anterior - spread - flat + thumb
president at Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet University).3 He noticed - d.r. + tongue
the difficulties deaf undergraduate students were having in developing ad-
- tip
equate English literacy skills. He believed that the use of Cued Speech
would provide deaf readers the linguistic (phonological) foundation nec- Note: The notation system for the phonetic features of cued language was borrowed and
modified from FleetWood and Metzger (1998).
essary to develop successful literacy skills. In 1975 Cornett stated that in
order for deaf individuals to live life to the fullest, they should be bilin-
gual (English and American Sign Language) and bicultural (Deaf culture are systematized sets of arbitrary features that represent the phonemes
and hearing culture). He believed that the cue system would enable them used to express a language. The phonemes of signed languages are repre-
to become true bilinguals by helping them gain fluency in English as their sented via the articulation of languages such as ASL, French Sign Lan-
second language. The Cued Speech system has since been adapted for use guage, and British Sign Language. The phonemes in spoken languages
with over fifty-six different languages and is now used in many countries are represented by the articulation of different languages (e.g., English,
(Cornett and Daisey 1992). French). The phonemes of cued languages are represented via the articu-
Fleetwood and Metzger (1998) conducted a linguistic analysis of the lation of different languages (e.g., cued English, cued French). Cues are vi-
use of cued English. They used the term cued language because cues are sual allophones that reference the phonemes of a traditionally spoken lan-
visible allophones representing consonant and vowel phonemic values of guage (see Fleetwood and Metzger 1998 for a comparison of spoken
a language (Fleetwood and Metzger 1991, 1998). For example, there are language and cued language linguistic structure).
spoken languages (e.g., spoken Spanish), signed languages (e.g., ASL), Cued Speech uses eight handshapes, four hand locations, and ten non-
written languages (e.g., written French), and cued languages (e.g., cued manual signals (NMS). The NMS that are phonetic features of the cues
English). The cues themselves are not a language, just as the articulation are mouth NMS. A combination of one hand shape and one NMS pro-
of both spoken languages and signed languages is not a language. The cues duces each consonant, and each vowel is produced by a combination of
one hand location and one NMS. The production of cued English words
3. Cornett (1967) called the system Cued Speech because its purpose is to follows the same consonant and vowel syllables used to produce spoken
make spoken language visible through the use of cues. The name has created mis- English words. The differences between a spoken word and a cued word
understandings from the general public, who often assume that it has something are at the phonetic level. To illustrate this point, the word cat is used in
to do with speaking skills. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify some misunderstand-
table 1. The table demonstrates that when the word cat is spoken or cued,
ings here. Cued Speech was not developed to improve deaf individuals' speech. It
it represents the same phonemes; however, the segments of phonetic fea-
does not require the use of speech (Fleetwood and Metzger 1991, 1997, 1998).
The National Cued Speech Association's position statement makes this point
tures representing each phoneme are different.
clear: "[T]he primary goal of Cued Speech use is to enable the deaf person to be- To illustrate the adequacy of the Cued Speech system in creating a vi-
come as literate as helshe would be without a hearing loss. Cued Speech was cre- sual modality of English, let us consider a few studies that have demon-
ated to enable deaf children to absorb the same phonemiclphonologicallanguage strated the success of this system in providing deaf children access to En-
base as hearing children as a foundation for reading." glish (see Kipila and Williams-Scott 1988 for a more thorough review).

54 : PETER C. HAUSER ASL and Cued English Codeswitching : 55

Berendt, Krupnik-Goldman, and Rupp (1990) used the Rhode Island Test data of NQ's language use. The trans litera tor provided interpreting from
of Language Structure (RITLS) with deaf children from ages six to sixteen ASL to cued English and vice versa. I did not use cued English because I
who had used cued English for at least two years. The study found that was the only Deaf ASL-user present during the study, and I wanted at
the children's mean English reading comprehension scores were at the least one person to be present whom NQ felt she could communicate with
92nd percentile when compared to the norms for those with hearing loss. only via ASL.
Wandel (1989) compared the Stanford Achievement Test's (SAT) Reading During the home visit, NQ had a deaf friend visiting. Her friend (re-
Comprehension subtest scores of deaf oral, cued English, Total Commu- ferred to hereafter with the pseudonym "CP") was a ten-year-old deaf girl
nication, and hearing students. There were 30 students in each group that who had learned cued English when she was three years old. She had
were carefully matched from a sample of 213 students. All students had learned signed English when she was in preschool but was not exposed to
prelingual, bilateral hearing loss. In each group, 15 students had severe sign in school again after preschool. She mainstreamed kindergarten and
hearing loss (except the hearing students), and 15 had profound hearing first grade with cued language transliterators and then continued the rest
loss. The researchers found no significant differences in the reading com- of her schooling without any support services. At the time of the study she
prehension subtest scores between the deaf cuers and the hearing con- was in fifth grade. CP's sign vocabulary was limited. CP's mother and sis-
trols. The oral and Total Communication students' scores were signifi- ter (three years older) communicate with her via cued English. CP usually
cantly lower. The structure of cued English gives cuers access to English's spends much of her free time with NQ.
phonological codes, and this is most likely why the cuers have demon- Upon arrival, I set up a video camera in the family's living room, where
strated successful English literacy skills (Beaupre 1986; Cornett 1967; NQ and CP were present, and left it on for most of the day. As soon as
Fleetwood and Metzger 1998; Hauser 1997; Leybaert and Alegria 1990; the video camera was set, NQ and CP decided to put on a show. They cre-
Leybaert and Charlier 1996). ated a skit in which they pretended to be news reporters who performed
"commercials" between their "news reports." The transliterator and I
were in another room with NQ's mother conducting an interview to col-
THE PRESENT STUDY lect background information. After the interview, NQ's mother and I
joined the girls. NQ's mother, who has adequate ASL fluency to engage
Methodology
in a signed conversation, used only cued English during this conversation;
A ten-year-old bilingual Korean-American girl who has been pro- I used ASL.
foundly deaf since birth was used in this study to determine whether code- The rest of the video data consisted of more play by NQ and CP as well
switching occurred between ASL and cued English. The participant was as normal interactions between NQ, CP, and other family members. CP's
involved in another case study (Hammes 1995) and was selected for this mother was present later in the day and was also interviewed for back-
study for several reasons: (I) it was reported that she was fluent in both ground info~mation. When CP returned home with her mother, I admin-
ASL and English (Hammes 1995), (2) her family and Hammes have had istered the Woodcock Johnson-Revised (WJ-R) Tests of Achievement
her academic and language skills assessed annually and have been keep- (Mather 1991) to NQ. The word-letter identification and passage com-
ing records of all evaluations, and (3) they had videotapes of her early lan- prehension subtests from WJ-R measured her English knowledge and
guage use. The same pseudonym, "NQ," used by Hammes for the par- reading achievement.
ticipant will be used here. With the help of a research assistant who is a deaf, native user of cued
A state-certified cued-language transliterator (who also uses ASL) and English, I reviewed the six-hour video footage from the home visit and a
I visited the family. I am a Deaf nonnative user of ASL and have interme- one-hour tape that consisted of video clips of NQ at different ages. Most
diate skills in cued English. My native language is English, and I used En- of the clips on the one-hour video were made when NQ participated in
glish orally before learning ASL during late adolescence. I did not use other studies. During the review, all of the situations in which NQ code-
cued English with NQ until the end of the day-after four hours of video switched were identified and transcribed. English glosses were used for

56 : PET E R c. H AU S E R ASL and Cued English Codeswitching : 57

ASL si~ns and were typed in capital letters; cued English utterances were NQ's mother heard of this, she contacted the girl's teacher to learn more
typed in lowercase letters. In each transcribed conversation, the addressee about cued English. She learned that there was a teacher who used both
was noted. This was important for the analysis of the situations in which cued English and ASL and that locally there were two cued language
codeswitching occurred. The research assistant, the cued language trans- transliterators and two ASL interpreters who also knew how to cue. NQ's
literator, and I transcribed NQ's utterances, and a certified ASL inter- mother had the teacher and one of the transliterators teach her how
preter translated NQ's mother's spoken English when she was out of the to cue.
camera's view (NQ's mother used spoken English simultaneously while When NQ was five years old, she had three different babysitters. One
she cued English). was a Deaf native ASL user from a Deaf family, one was hard of hearing
and used ASL, and the other one was a deaf person who used cued En-
Background glish and knew some ASL. Hammes (1995) reported that at that time NQ
had a good ASL foundation and her parents felt that it was time to intro-
Because NQ was adopted, only limited information on her birth his- duce her to English via cueing. The school administrators would not al-
tory is available. She lived in a foster home in a different country before low cued English to be used in the kindergarten classroom because they
she was adopted at five-and-a-half months of age by her current family in were afraid it would influence the other children's use of ASL. As a result,
the United States. Her adoptive mother (who is referred to as "mother" NQ mainstreamed kindergarten with two ASL interpreters who also
in this chapter) suspected NQ's hearing loss almost immediately when she knew how to cue.
noticed that NQ was copying her mouth movements but was not making Hammes (1995, 21) reported that NQ's parents feltthat cueing "would
any sounds. NQ was first exposed to sign language when she was fifteen give NQ equal access (visually) to all of the languages her siblings and
months old through a hearing babysitter who was a special education classmates in the mainstream routinely heard." Her parents said "all of the
teacher. Concurrently, her mother, father, and older brothers attended
languages" because NQ's kindergarten class was learning Spanish. Also,
ASL classes for a year. When NQ was two years old, she had a full-time NQ's father is a native of Denmark and sometimes speaks Danish at
babysitter who was deaf and signed to her. The babysitter continued to home. NQ's parents value cultural diversity and wanted to expose NQ to
work for the family until NQ was five years old. a number of different languages and cultures, including Deaf culture. The
NQ's mother decided to use ASLwith NQ after she read literature about family has brought NQ to different Deaf cultural events and ASL family
deafness and deaf culture. Reading Unlocking the Curriculum: Principles camps. At the time of this study, the family reported that they were con-
for Achieving Access in Deaf Education (Johnson, Liddell, and Erting tinuing to bring her to such events.
1989) convinced her to choose ASL as the language to use to communi- In kindergarten the pupils often switched between cued English and
cate with her daughter. During that time, she heard about cued English ASL; the interpreters and the teacher tried to give NQ information in both
and decided that it would be an effective means to expose her daughter to languages, using one language at a time. For example, the teacher would
English. However, a misinformed teacher told NQ's mother that nobody read stories to her twice, and the interpreters used one language during
uses this communication mode anymore. NQ's mother continued to use the first reading and another language during the second reading. When
ASL but still wanted to find a way to introduce her daughter to English. the teacher introduced Spanish to the class, the interpreters transliterated
When NQ was four years old, she was placed in a self-contained pre- spoken Spanish to cued Spanish.
school classroom for deaf students that emphasized instruction in ASL. NQ's mother continued to use ASL at home except when she wanted
During that time, she started to write words and use fingerspelling. NQ's to use an English word. She used to fingerspell when she used English
mother started to realize the need for English phonological awareness in words but then began cueing the English words instead. When NQ at first
order for NQ to be able to read. She began to wonder how her daughter thought cued English was a different fingerspelling system, her mother ex-
could learn to read English through ASL and fingerspelling alone. During plained to her that it was "handshapes that show the 'sounds' of English."
that time, a deaf girl who used cued English moved into NQ's area. When NQ's mother knew that the cues did not actually represent sounds and
58 : PET E R C. H A USE R
ASL and Cued English Codeswitching : 59
that they really represented the phonemes of English, but she did not TABLE:z..Achievement Scores from Stanford Achievement Test -
know how to explain that to NQ without using the word sounds. Hearing Impaired (Allen, White, and Karchmer 1983)
NQ started to understand the relationship between the English pho- Grade Percentile
nemes and written English. For example, she once asked her mother, Subtest Age Grade Equivalent Rank
"BLUESPELL"("how do you spell 'blue'?").4 Her mother replied in cued 8 :z.nd nla
Reading vocabulary 3rd
English, "blue." And NQ wrote bloo. This was the first time NQ's mother 9 4th 4th nla
noticed NQ develop a phonological awareness of English. Her mother 10 5th 5th 99th
gradually used more cued English. When NQ was seven years old, her Reading comprehension 7 :z.nd :z.nd 7:z.nd
mother started to cue English more than she signed ASL. 8 3rd 3rd 87th
9 4th 4th nla
From first grade to her current fifth-grade class, NQ remained at the
10 5th 5th 96th
same school. She is the only Deaf child in her school and has been using
cued language transliterators for all of her classes. There are several hard Note: Grade equivalents were based on hearing norms; percentile ranks were based on the
of hearing students in the school. When NQ was in first grade, she loved SAT-HI hearing-impaired norms, all levels of hearing loss.

to write and often would spend a lot of her free time writing to others.
The school has brought different deaf adults and teenagers into the class- NQ's signing consisted of many of the features that are characteristic
room to introduce the children to other deaf people and to ASL. NQ has of ASL, such as the use of nonmanual signals, classifiers, space, role shift-
been involved in extracurricular activities such as soccer, ice skating, ing, and gesture. Often her signing resembled contact signing (Lucus and
gymnastics, and diving. She attends an ASL Sunday school on the week- Valli 1992) rather than a more ASL-like form of signing. For example,
ends at a local church. Many of NQ's classmates have learned how to cue when she signed to me in her mother's and her friend's presence, she used
and are able to communicate with her directly. Some of them also know less space and fewer classifiers than when she was alone with me. Her
how to fingerspell. mother reported that NQ's signing during the visit was not like the" usual
ASL" she used when she signed with her Deaf friends who are native ASL
users. Although NQ used some signs from MCE such as ISand THE,most
American Sign Language Fluency
of her signs were not in the initialized form introduced by MCE. Overall,
Standardized tests with normative data used to measure ASL develop- her signing style in this situation was similar to what is normally found
ment in children are not yet available; however, some are currently in de- among native ASL signers when they are in contact with English users (d.
velopment (Hoffmeister et al. 1997; Strong and Prinz 1997). Thus it was Lucas and Valli 1992).
necessary to rely on qualitative data to judge NQ's fluency in ASL. The lan-
guage environment had to be taken into consideration in order to quali-
tatively analyze NQ's signing skills. In the home visit, no native ASL users English Fluency
were present; there were two hearing nonnative users of ASL who also
knew cued English (NQ's mother and the cued language transliterator); a I used standardized English achievement tests to measure NQ's English
proficiency. Although a thorough discussion on reading is beyond the
deaf girl (CP), NQ's friend, who uses cued English and has a limited sign
vocabulary; and a Deaf nonnative user of ASL (the author). scope of this chapter, a brief look at NQ's reading achievement helps to
illustrate her English knowledge, including her knowledge of English pho-
4. Transcription conventions in NQ's utterances: SMALLCAPS = American Sign nology. NQ has taken a number of standardized English achievement tests
Language glosses, noncaps = cued English, CL = classifier, G = Gesture, :z.h= since she entered second grade. Table 2 shows her scores from the Stan-
two hands, x-x-x = fingerspelled utterance, and. . denotes a pause over 1.5 sec- ford Achievement Test-Hearing-Impaired (SAT-HI;see Allen, White, and
onds.
Karchmer 1983).

60 PETER C. HAUSER
ASL and Cued English Codeswitching 61
 Dur-ingthe home visit, I gave NQ the WJ-R letter-word identification results of this test can also be generalized to cued English conversations:
subtest, which measures ability to rapidly and automatically recognize NQ's understanding of English semantics and syntax is equivalent to that
letters and words by sight (Mather 1991). However, it does not require of a hearing native speaker of English at her age and grade level.
knowledge of word meanings. This is an important skill for reading be-
cause it indicates that the reader does not have to attribute conscious en-
ergy attending to words and is therefore able to use the mental energy to EVIDENCE OF CODESWITCHING
process and understand written materials (Mather 1991). This subtest
was used here to measure her awareness of English phonology. This section consists of two parts: first, examples of codeswitching for
The standard administration procedure for this subtest is for the par- different functions, and second, a discussion of NQ's sociopsychological
ticipant to read lists of words aloud. To get a correct score, a hearing motivations for codeswitching. The first section illustrates the manner in
reader has to pronounce the test items correctly, which demonstrates his which NQ switched from signing ASL to cueing English and vice versa
or her ability to use phonetic encoding. Therefore, this test is usually not and also some of her reasons for doing so. For this analysis I used data
used with deaf readers (or is used with modifications of the standard pro- from video clips taken when NQ was younger as well as the videos from
cedures) because they often do not have a way to demonstrate that they the family visit.
use phonemic encoding. For example, if the test is administered to an oral In ASL, repeating a sign two to three times creates a durational inflec-
deaf child, th~ examiner would not be able to distinguish between errors in tion that can be added to some root morphemes to show that an event is
phonemic encoding and speech errors. However, with NQ, no modifica- recurring (Klima and Bellugi 1979). For example, the sign AGAINcan be
tion of the standard procedures was necessary-NQ was able to cue the repeated three times to indicate that something occurs frequently. Inter-
words because their phonemes can be shown with cues rather than spo- estingly, NQ cued "again" and repeated the word three times in a video
ken allophones. clip taken when she was seven years old, as illustrated in this example:
I videotaped NQ's responses, and the cued language transliterator was
present during the testing. The transliterator determined whether the cor- EXAMPLE 5

rect sequence of cues (English phonemes) was used when NQ read the test
One day, I make again, again, again.
items. The transliterator reviewed the videotape to confirm the results.
For example, for the word expostulate, NQ cued IckspasU'~lclt/, which is She was talking about making peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and
a correct phonological sequence for that word. Using the standardized was trying to say that she makes them quite frequently. This is a syntac-
norms of the WJ-R, NQ's scores were equivalent to a 5.4 grade hearing tic form of intrasentential dynamic interference in which the ASL dura-
child who was ten years and nine months old. The results of this test in- tional inflection influenced her cued English utterance. Dynamic interfer-
dicated that she is able to use English phonemic encoding and that her ences are s~ort-lived intrusions of one language on another language
phonological awareness of English was at her age and grade level. (Grosjean 1992). This type of syntactic intr~sentential dynamic interfer-
I also administered to NQ the Passage Comprehension subtest of the ence was not observed in the data of NQ when she was ten years old.
WJ-R, which measured her ability to use contextually based word-recog- However, more naturalistic data are necessary in order to claim that it oc-
nition skills and semantic and syntactic cues to comprehend written text. curred only during the period in which she started to acquire her second
The test items were short passages with one word missing from each pas- language (cued English).
sage. The test required her to read a passage, understand its main idea, At seven years of age, NQ codeswitched to ASL during cued English
and respond with the missing word. To be able to respond with the cor- utterances when she appeared unsure how to cue an English word or was
rect word, NQ had to understand the meaning of the entire passage. Us- unsure of an English morpheme/lexeme. This type of codeswitching was
ing the norms from the WJ-R, NQ's reading comprehension skills were at most frequent in the video clips of NQ when she had had only two years
the 5.6 grade-equivalent level and the ten-year, ten-month age level. The of experience with English. In example 6, NQ did not know how to cue
61 : PET E R c. H A USE R ASL and Cued English Codeswitching : 63
the wotd toast or did not know the word in English. As a result, she code- EXAMPLE 9

switched intrasententially to her dominant language for the sign TOAST:

ana ma~rftS fugas jzl rasi:d qalk I weekend je ne sais pas quand est-ce
EXAMPLE 6 que Ie weekend d'apres lui.
("I don't know when Rachid is coming; he said at the weekend, 1 don't
. . . but I do TOASTand butter and jelly almost everyday know when the weekend is according to him. ")
This crutch is similar to what Zen tella observed in some of the children As mentioned earlier in the chapter, the Arabic-French bilinguals bor-
and adults in her study (1997, 98). NQ wanted to continue to tell her rowed terms from one language intrasententially while using another lan-
story but was at a loss in English when she wanted to use "toast," so she guage as the matrix language because the speakers preferred to use some
used codeswitching as a crutch to help her continue. Three percent of the terms in a specific language. For example, in Bentahila (1983, 236) the
codeswitches in Zentella's (1997) data of Puerto Rican children consisted Moroccan bilinguals frequently switched from Arabic to French for med-
of crutches employed when a child did not know a word. For example ical terminology:
(Zentella 1997,98):
EXAMPLE 10

EXAMPLE 7
min hi:t tatSwwab Ie vaccin bas jsuf I reaction positive.
Look at her lunar. My brother's got one on his nalga. (" as soon as he has the vaccination in order to see the positive reaction. ")
("mole") ("buttock")
When using ASL, NQ often switched to cued English for proper names
In the video of the family visit, sometimes NQ began an utterance in and names of places. This was illustrated in example 8, in which she
one language and switched to another language because a term was more codeswitched to cued English for the name of a football team. Another
readily available in it. After the switch, she continued in that language. example of this type of codeswitching is:
This is what Clyne (1967) referred to as consequential triggering. In the EXAMPLE 11
following example, NQ was describing the results of a football game:
. . GO TO Heidi's HOUSE. . . PRO.l CAN GO TO Kilpher FOR MY
EXAMPLE 8 BIRTHDAY

MINNESOTA
WONAND. . AND. . Timberwolves lost because. . . NQ also switched from cued English to ASL for some adjectives that
can be produced with facial expressions to add descriptive information to
Instead of codeswitching to cued English, NQ could have fingerspelled
a verb (e.g., WAKE-UP) or an adjective (e.g., TIRED).Codeswitching some-
T-I-M-B-E-R-W-O-L-V-E-S, which would have been equivalent to saying each
times impa!ts a stylistic effect (Zentella 1997). In example 12, NQ used
letter of the word in English (unless she used lexicalized fingerspelling). It
facial expressions in addition to ASL signs to show that her brothers
is possible she switched to cued English because she did not know how to
woke up restless and were extremely tired:
fingerspell the name of the team but knew how to cue it in English.
Bentahila (1983) also observed consequential triggering from Arabic EXAMPLE 12

to French in Moroccan bilinguals. In the following example from Ben-

. . . brothers are WAKE-UPso woke up so TIRED so I said. . .
tahila's article (1983, 236), the speaker began an utterance in Arabic and
switched to French for the term weekend because Arabic has no equiva- In this example, the codeswitching did not seem to add a stylistic effect.
lent term. The conversation continued in French. The italicized utterances Instead, ASL appeared to have an advantage over English because ASL
are in French, and the romanized utterances are in Arabic. An English permits the incorporation of dramatic facial expressions during a role
translation follows in quotation marks: switch to illustrate affect. By signing TIRED,she was able use ASL features

64 : PET E R c. H A USE R ASL and Cued English Codeswitching : 65

such as putting her head and shoulders down, closing her eyes, and mak- cueing to get a drink, and in the second example, she was trying to remind
ing a facial expression that suggested fatigue. herself of what else she needed to say:
When NQ was unsure whether her utterance was clear, she code-
EXAMPLE 16
switched and repeated her utterance. In example 13, she wanted to say
"Tornadoes are scary." (a) upstairs to kitchen EXCUSE-ME and I said. . .
EXAMPLE 13
(b) that is why I like that. . . SECONDTHINGMORESAY

HURRICANE.. . CL:1 (tornado) . . . tornado SCARY The examples discussed here demonstrate that it is possible to
codeswitch between ASL and cued English. More important, NQ's
She did not know a sign for tornadoes and signed HURRICANE. Realiz-
codeswitching illustrates that ASL-cued English codeswitching functions
ing that it was the wrong sign, she then used a classifier to show what
in a manner similar to spoken language codeswitching.
she was talking about. Still unsure whether her meaning was clear, she
Eight types of codeswitching were identified in this study:
switched to cued English and cued "tornado." Kachru (1977) also ob-
served this type of codeswitching in Hindi-English bilinguals, and Zen- 1. A form of syntactic intrasentential dynamic interference in which
tella (1997) observed codeswitching for clarification in the Puerto Rican the syntax of one language appeared in another language being
children's conversations.
used. This appeared in the data of NQ only when she was seven
During pauses, while NQ was thinking of how to finish her utterance, years old.
she sometimes codeswitched to fill in the pause and then returned to the 2. When NQ appeared at a loss for words in her matrix language,
matrix language: she switched to the other language for the word and then contin-
EXAMPLE 14 ued in the matrix language.
3. She switched from one language to another for specific words,
AND NOT HAVE-TO PAYBECAUSE. . my . . MY FRIEND FATHER WORK FOR
such as proper names and names of places.
AIRPLANE
4. In situations in which she felt she did not have the words she
Bentahila (1983) also observed codeswitching by the Arabic-French wanted in the language she was using, NQ switched to the other
bilinguals to fill in a gap while thinking and then returning to the matrix language, then continued to use that language for the rest of her
language. This is another crutch that can be used to "cover a momentary utterance.
lapse of memory" (Zentella 1997,98). Three percent of the codeswitches 5. NQ switched to another language when she felt that the other
in Zentella's study consisted of this type of crutch that was used to aid the language could better describe what she was trying to say.
flow of an utterance. 6. NQ codeswitched when she was not sure if what she said in one
Bentahila (1983, 240) also found the Arabic-French bilinguals code- language was clear.
switched while making comments that were unrelated to the topic they 7. Codeswitching was used to fill in a gap while thinking.
were discussing. The following example illustrates this point: 8. Codeswitching was used to make a comment unrelated to the
topic.
EXAMPLE 15

f lluwl kanu ga~ ma kajbanu. Tu veux un peu de coca? .

("at the beginning they weren't seen at all. Do you want some Coke?")
Sociopsychological Motivations
A similar example was mentioned earlier in which a speaker code-
switched when the topic shifted (Zentella 1997). This type of codeswitch- NQ used both situational and metaphorical codeswitching (Blom and
ing was also observed in NQ's conversations. In example 16, NQ stopped Gumperz 1972). In situations in which she was communicating directly
66 : PET ERe. H A USE R ASL and Cued English Codeswitching : 67
with her friend CP, the only person in the room who had a limited sign EXAMPLE 18

vocabulary, NQ used cued English. And in situations in which NQ was

12. MQ [to NQ]: who all went snowboarding that time. . it was Jen,
communicating directly with me, the only person who NQ thought did
that's right
not know how to cue, she used ASL. In these two social situations, NQ
13. NQ [to MQ]: SECONDTIMEbecause because ONETIMEshe GOTO
had to choose the language to match the situation-this is what Blom and
Heidi's HOUSEand she hiding out and HAVEsnowboard and she
Gumperz (1972) refer to as situational switching. The following conver-
. . her. . no . . no . . she HAVEa neighbor THATHAVECL:(big hill)
sation is an example of situational switching. In that situation, NQ's
14. MQ [to NQ]: she tried it in her back yard
mother (MQ) and NQ were talking about an amusement park. NQ was
15. NQ [to MQ]: G: (over there) IT HARDbecause there. . IT HARD
explaining an amusement park ride to me (PH), and CP wanted NQ to
tell me about another ride. NQ codeswitched from ASL when she was Using the markedness model (Myers-Scotton 1993), I was further able
communicating with me to cued English when communicating with CP: to analyze the social motivations of NQ's codeswitching. However, I did
so with caution because the markedness model is based on the premise
EXAMPLE 17
that speakers operate within a normative framework specific to their
I. MQ [to NQ]: and the monster that one was really bad too community. Although the model postulates that codeswitching occurs be-
2. NQ [to PH]: PRo-3 GOTO MONSTER WITHME cause speakers make choices and not because norms direct them to do so,
3. PH [to NQ]: MONSTER it is necessary to understand the community's pattern of use to identify
4. NQ [to PH]: KNOWRIDECL:2h (round object) CANSITTHREE what could be considered marked or unmarked codes. With this in mind,
O-R SIXPEOPLEIN CL:2h (round object) MANYCL:G (there and I attempted an analysis of the social motivations of NQ's codeswitching.
there) CL:G (pull seat bar) CL:G (move in large circles) . . LOOK- Again, unlike the purpose of the markedness model, the analyses cannot
LIKE GO HIT OTHER CL:2h (round object) be generalized to other ASL-cued English codeswitching situations until
5. MQ [to NQ]: I like the water park community norms have been investigated.
6. CP [to NQ]: remember When I first arrived at NQ's home, NQ opened the door and her
7. NQ [to CP]: monster mother was behind her. NQ looked at me and was not sure what the un-
8. CP [to NQ]: remember marked RO set was for a conversation with me. She turned to her mother,
9. NQ [to CP]: Excalibur who signed WELCOME. Immediately, NQ signed WHOYOU?She chose to
10. CP [to NQ]: NO. . YES. . Excalibur use ASL with me apparently because she believed that her mother's WEL-
COMEin ASL indexed to the unmarked RO set for a conversation with
I I. NQ [to PH]: E-X-C-A-L-I-B-U-R
me. From her mother's use of ASL to greet me, NQ realized that I was a
Blom and Gumperz (1972) also observed metaphorical switching, in member of her community and started to converse with me in the lan-
which codeswitching occurred in utterances with the same individual. For guage use.din Deaf culture.
example, in the previous conversation CP used some of the ASL signs she When NQ was alone with CP, she used cued English, which was the
knew when she was talking to NQ, and she completed the utterance with unmarked code in conversations between them. I cannot claim here that
a word cued in English (line 10). CP has limited sign vocabulary; neverthe- the use of cued English is the unmarked code within the cueing commu-
less, she was able to demonstrate some codeswitching. Blom and Gum- nity; a study is needed to investigate the markedness of cued English
perz (1972) also observed metaphorical switching in bilingual individuals within that community. However, within the microcommunity (i.e., the
who had a greater fluency in both languages than CP had in ASL. A bet- family and CP) the unmarked code for conversations with CP was appar-
ter example of metaphorical switching is between two bilinguals, and this ently cued English. This was understandable because cued English was
was observed in example 18, when NQ was communicating with her the only language CP was able to use fluently. As noticed in the dialogue
mother (an ASL-cued English bilingual): about the amusement park ride, NQ used ASL with me and cued English
68 : PET ERe. H A USE R ASL and Cued English Codeswitching : 69
with CPoNQ codeswitched to maintain the unmarked RO set for inter- This type of codeswitch is similar to the codeswitching that occurred
actions with a perceived ASL-only monolingual and a cued English between Land T in example 4~in which they were talking with each other
monolingual. Similarly~the Spanish-English bilingual children in Zen- and nearby adults (Zentella 1997). Land T spoke English with each other
tella's (1997) study were most responsive to the dominant language of when they apparently did not want to involve the adults in the conversa-
their addressee. tion and spoke in Spanish to involve the adults. It is possible to claim that
When NQ conversed with her mother~ a bilingual~ as in the conversa- Land T chose to use the marked code (English) when they wanted to main-
tion about snowboarding~ she used unmarked codeswitching. It is pos- tain distance from the expected RO set for a conversation with Spanish-
sible that she was switching between two unmarked RO sets with her dominant speaking adults and switched to the unmarked code to include
mother as a way of showing her bilingual identity (as Paca might have done the adults in the conversation. Similarly~in example 20 when NQ code-
in example 3). It is more likely that NQ codeswitched between ASL and switched from ASL to cued English to check something with her mother,
cued English when she was conversing with her mother in front of me and it is possible that she used the apparent marked code for a conversation
CP because she did not want to exclude us from the conversation. There- with an ASL monolingual so that she could momentarily distance herself
fore~it is possible to claim that NQ was codeswitching in order to be neu- from the expected RO set between herself and me.
tral by avoiding committing to a single RO set and excluding one of the
individuals in the room.
CP appeared to attempt to be neutral as well by speaking English DISCUSSION

rather than cueing or signing. This could be termed mode switching be-
cause she switched from cueing English to NQ to speaking English to The examples from this section illustrate three main points: (I) it is
both NQ and me. She apparently hoped that this would be an effective possible to codeswitch between ASL and cued English, (2) the functions
means of communicating with both of us and that we would be able to of ASL-cued English codeswitching are found in spoken language code-
speechread her. When I did not understand her, she switched to the un- switching, and (3) it is possible to analyze the sociopsychological motiva-
marked code between herself and NQ to tell NQ what she wanted to say, tions of codeswitching between ASL and cued English. However, it is not
and then NQ used the unmarked code between NQ and me to tell me possible to generalize the markedness of cued English or ASL within spe-
what CP had said. An example of this situation occurred when NQ's pet cific communities based on these very limited data. Additionally, frequen-
bird flew onto my shoulder: cies of specific codeswitching functions were not tallied because more nat-
uralistic data are necessary before we can make any such generalizations.
EXAMPLE 19
It would be interesting to investigate the markedness of ASL within the
CP [to PH]: (speaking-unclear what was said) cueing community and of cued English within the signing community.
CP [to NQ]: it might poop (laughs) Based on .my experience with those two communities, I can hypothesize
NQ [to PH]: MIGHTPOOP(laughs) that using cued English within a signing community would be a marked
code choice because it is most likely the unexpected RO set. However~ the
Earlier in the chapter, I mentioned that within some linguistic commu- cueing community is more used to being around cued English and ASL bi-
nities, individuals codeswitch to change the topic or to check for clarifi- linguals and witness conversations in ASL more frequently than members
cation. Example 20 illustrates that NQ was using ASL to converse with of the signing community witness cued English conversations. Therefore,
me and switched to cued English to check something with her mother: I assumed that signing within the cueing community would be less marked
EXAMPLE 20
than cueing in a signing community. In some bilingual communities, un-
marked codeswitching is often not predicted (Myers-Scotton 1993; Scot-
NQ [to PH]: YES AND MY MOTHER GO AND THE TRIP IS FREE ton 1988). In those communities, codeswitching presents intergroup com-
NQ [to MQ]: right, it's free? Becky told me. petition or conflict. These are communities in which intergroup tension

70 : PET E R c. H A USE R ASL and Cued English Codeswitching : 71

exists, 'and language loyalty expresses that tension. I assume that this is category of constituents. It would be interesting to analyze the structural
also the case within the deaf community. However, these assumptions constraints of ASL and cued English to determine the permissible loci for
need to be tested with qualitative studies. codeswitching.
NQ usually codeswitched to the language the addressee understood Although this chapter is not a study of applied linguistics, the findings
should be of interest to linguists involved in education and language plan-
best. Although this practice was prevalent in the community that Zentella
(1997) studied, NQ's experiences were different from those of the Puerto ning. Most educational programs that use cued English in the classroom
Rican children. In the New York community, parents counseled their chil- are mainstream programs. Only a few use cued English along with ASL
dren to speak the language that an addressee understands best. NQ's or manually coded English. It would be interesting to investigate whether
mother did not explicitly teach NQ when and where to codeswitch. How- the use of ASL and cued English in the classroom is a successful method
ever, her mother and other bilingual members of her community did func- for strengthening deaf children's bilingual skills.
tion as codeswitching models. As mentioned earlier, NQ depended on her
mother to identify the unmarked RO sets for a conversation with me
when I first arrived at their house. CONCLUSION

NQ's mother reported that NQ codeswitches frequently at home even

though her mother now primarily uses cued English. This is not an un- The results of this case study demonstrate that the codeswitching func-
usual situation. In Zentella's (1997) study, immigrant mothers who were tions in ASL and cued English are similar to those found in spoken lan-
Spanish-dominant and knew only a little English and rarely codeswitched guage codeswitching. Cueing enables people to express English in a visual
often had children who codeswitch frequently at home. For example, in mode and to use English phonology, morphology, and syntax. This study
one two-hour recording of a bilingual child and her mother in their home, demonstrates that, when used by a bilingual who is fluent in ASL, code-
the child codeswitched fifty-seven times, whereas her mother switched switching betWeen ASL and cued English exhibits sociolinguistic charac-
with her only tWice. teristics similar to those found with people who are bilingual in spoken
NQ is aware that she is fluent in tWo languages. She uses ASL to com- languages. This study provides additional support that cued English-as
municate with members of the Deaf signing community. She uses cued En- another natural form of English and when used in natural interaction - is
glish to communicate at school (via transliterators) and with others who influenced by similar sociolinguistic factors.
know cued English. She considers herself a member of both the Deaf World Further studies are needed before the results of this study can be gen-
and the Hearing World. Although this was self-reported, it was also evi- eralized to other cued English bilinguals. In addition, a future study is nec-
dent through her codeswitching. Codeswitching is a way of showing that essary to investigate the patterns of codeswitching with cued English and
a person has a bilingual identity (Zentella 1997). One summer NQ's fam- ASL native monolinguals present. It would also be interesting to explore
ily went to the National Association of the Deaf's biennial convention. the codeswitching patterns of deaf individuals who are fluent in more than
During the convention, a Deaf adult approached NQ and asked her why one cued "language. Additionally, studies. on codeswitching betWeen tWo
she was cueing. At the age of eight, she laughed, "I know tWo languages, or more signed languages are much needed. Similar results may be found
and you only know one!" for deaf bilingual signers who are fluent in tWo or more signed languages.
Some studies on codeswitching include a structural analysis. For ex-
ample, Zentella (1997) found that Spanish-English bilinguals do not fa-
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