Manually Coded Language - Criticisms

Criticisms

The use of MCLs is controversial, and has been opposed since Épée's time by "oralists" who believe Deaf people should speak, lipread and use hearing aids rather than sign — and on the other side, from defenders of Deaf culture who resist attempts to supplant their community language with the language of the dominant (Hearing) culture. Members of the signing Deaf community usually find MCLs "unnatural" and "cumbersome", but elements of these systems have also had an influence on deaf sign languages (see Contact Sign).

Research in the U.S. have shown that Manually Coded English is usually applied incompletely and inconsistently in classrooms: Hearing teachers tend to "cut corners" by not signing word endings and "function words", possibly because they slow down the pace and distort the phrasing of the teacher's natural speech. The result is a kind of "Pidgin Sign English" which lacks the grammatical complexity of both English and American Sign Language.

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