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The main issue addressed in this paper is a practical application of sign language in early development support for deaf and hard of hearing children in Poland. This discussion is set in a broad cultural, linguistic, psychological and rehabilitation context. This paper presents the concept of Mary Pat Moeller which includes four approaches to the use of sign language in the programming of language in DHH. The discussion on the possibility of Polish rehabilitation centres adopting these solutions required an explanation of the diff erences between auditory deprivation and language deprivation, which is another important issue addressed in this paper. The main aim of this publication is to propose a fl exible approach to the creation of a model of education for deaf and hard of hearing children, one that will completely fulfi ll the needs of a specifi c child and to substantially argue about the conviction that sign language is a factor potentially detrimental to the development of these children.

The aim of this paper is to show shifts in the language development of deaf and hard of hearing children over the last 30 years. The paper presents an overview of Western and Polish studies on education and language development in deaf children in terms of psycholinguistics. Perceptions of the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of such children must be subject to revision and continual methodological reflection due to rapidly changing variables, such as technological progress, social and cultural conditions of primary socialization and the aims of deaf education. Now that an increasing number of deaf children undergo cochlear implantation, and digital hearing aids can provide 70-75 dB of gain, thus enabling the children to spontaneously develop speech, many of them function in a bimodal environment of the sign and the speech. However, they perform at different levels of educational and developmental success. This paper elucidates the issues of language flexibility in and heterogenization of children using hearing aids or implants on a daily basis.

Since 2011, or since the entry into force of the Sign Language Act, there has been growing interest in Poland in this form of communication not only among public institutions or mass media but also among scholars. To date, Polish research into sign languages, not very extensive anyway, has focused on their grammar aspects. This paper is an attempt to bring a new, sociolinguist perspective in sign language research in Poland. Hence, it has some of the character of a review. The Authors propose four areas of sociolinguist research into sign language. The first one is the description of lexical variants (especially the phonological and the lexical ones), the second one is the observation of the life of words and the historical changes in the sign language lexis, while the third area involves research on language interactions, especially the codes included in the so called sign language continuum. The last area considered by the Authors is the reconstruction of deaf Poles’ attitudes to sign language. The suggested direction of research is especially important in the light of the global tendency of languages (and thus of cultures) to die out, mostly for reasons of civilization.

This paper discusses the communicative competence of deaf children. It illustrates the process in which such children build narrative texts in interaction with a deaf teacher, and presents the diversity of this process due to the shared vs. non-shared perception of a picture - the source of the topic. Detailed analyses focus on the formal and semantic aspect of the stories, including the length of the text in sign language, the content selected, information categories, and types of answers to the teacher’s questions. This text is our contribution in memory of Professor Grace Wales Shugar, whose idea of dual agentivity of child-adult interaction inspired the research presented here.

The aim of this article is to describe a negative prefix, NEG-, in Polish Sign Language (PJM) which appears to be indigenous to the language. This is of interest given the relative rarity of prefixes in sign languages. Prefixed PJM signs were analyzed on the basis of both a corpus of texts signed by 15 deaf PJM users who are either native or near-native signers, and material including a specified range of prefixed signs as demonstrated by native signers in dictionary form (i.e. signs produced in isolation, not as part of phrases or sentences). In order to define the morphological rules behind prefixation on both the phonological and morphological levels, native PJM users were consulted for their expertise. The research results can enrich models for describing processes of grammaticalization in the context of the visual-gestural modality that forms the basis for sign language structure.

Tomaszewski Piotr, Implanty ślimakowe – etyka a wybór [Cochlear implants – ethics and choices]. „Kultura – Społeczeństwo – Edukacja” nr 2(14) 2018, Poznań 2018, pp. 155–181, Adam Mickiewicz University Press. ISSN 2300-0422. DOI 10.14746/kse.2018.14.13. This study discusses the ethical issue of the development of hearing technology in the form of cochlear implants that are used by an ever-growing number of deaf and hard of hearing people. The development of this kind of technology has progressed so quickly all over the world, including Poland, that the deafness paradigms have drastically changed. This may affect, to a greater or lesser degree, not only the implementation of early support programmes, but also the image of the Deaf communities using their respective sign languages on a daily basis. It is therefore necessary to create an eclectic model of education for deaf and hard of hearing people which would allow for the ethical option to integrate the conflicting approaches on the proper procedure for deciding on the language (spoken or signed) and the culture (the hearing or the Deaf one) for the development of deaf and hard of hearing students with cochlear implants or hearing aids.