The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the development and importance of fingerspelling among young Deaf children of Deaf parents for communication, learning about language, and pre-literacy in their natural home environment. The rationale was to examine how Deaf parents use fingerspelling with their young Deaf children during…

Analysis of videotapes of five trained teachers of deaf children found that the teachers did not fingerspell often, but when they did they sought to express a specific English word. Clarity of fingerspelled utterances varied greatly, ranging from whole-word gestalts to words wherein individual letters could be discerned. (Author/CB)

The fingerspelling component of thirteen samples of Visible English (the system of communication in which all speech is supposed to be simultaneoously fingerspelled) used by teachers in classrooms in two schools for the deaf were analyzed linguistically. Only 56 percent of what should have been fingerspelled was present and legible. (Author/CFM)