Linguistic environment of the deaf child: a focus on teachers' use of nonliteral language

Teachers' communication with deaf and hearing children was compared to identify differences in the teachers' use of two types of nonliteral language: idiomatic language and indirect requests. Two groups of teachers of the deaf were observed, one using oral language only and the other using Total Communication. A third group consisted of teachers of normally hearing children. No differences were found in teachers' use of nonliteral language when talking to hearing children as compared to teachers talking to oral deaf children. Reduced use of idiomatic language occurred, in both the oral and signed portions of communication, only when Total Communication was used. No differences were observed in the oral portion of the three groups' use of indirect requests. However, only 55% of these requests were encoded nonliterally in the signed portion of utterances.