From "Communication Mode" to "Language Access Profile" in Research with DHH Children

Abstract

AcknowledgementsThe author is indebted to Matt Dye and Krister Schönström for organizing the workshop that galvanized the development of many of ideas presented here, to Diane Lillo-Martin for her generous support of this research, and to many colleagues at UConn, Boston University, and Boston Children's Hospital for their helpful feedback about this project in various stages of its development. Last but not least, Ithank the participants, who took time out of their lives to support this work. Despite the centrality of communication mode as a construct to much theoretical and applied work with DHH children, seemingly little attention has been paid to how it is operationalized, and to the ways that a given operationalization can impact the types of conclusions that can be drawn from a given study. The goal of this paper is not to advocate for or against any particular operational definition, but rather to argue that communication mode as a construct is less useful than what I will refer to as a child's "language access profile".