Storytelling with Sign Language Interpretation as a Multimodal Literacy Event: Implications for Deaf and Hearing Children

Abstract

This article examines storytelling events for children in a library and a children's bookstore in which storytellers are accompanied by sign language interpreters. The result is that both hearing and Deaf children participate in a literacy event in which storyteller and interpreter produce a multilingual, multimodal and multimedial narrative. Using tools derived from the ethnography of communication, social semiotics and multimodal interactional analysis we build a model to examine that this discursive interrelationship between storyteller and interpreter has for hearing and Deaf children's literary experience in the event. We postulate a continuum of six configurations (three for hearing children and three for Deaf children) in which the interpreter-storyteller relationship may add little to enhance or even disturb children's narrative experience. In the conclusions we discuss possible alternative designs that would reduce Deaf children's asymmetrical standing in the event.