Sign Systems, Cued Speech

Background

Cued Speech was created in 1966 by Dr. R. Orin Cornett, a professor at Gallaudet University, to make English more visible in hopes that by making sounds more easily distinguishable, deaf children would have improved language and literacy skills. Cornett posited that if deaf children have regular access to a complete spoken language, English, through visual methods, then they will be better positioned to acquire and internalize English vocabulary and grammar. Thus, their ability to read and write in English will be improved. The intention of Cued Speech was not to teach deaf children to speak. The term “Cued Speech” actually refers to speech that is enhanced with the use of visual cues.

Cued Speech has some controversy within the Deaf Community. There are some who maintain that Cued Speech is not a language and should not be used to replace American Sign Language (ASL) and thus, it is unacceptable to the Deaf Community. It is true that Cued Speech is not a language; it was not intended to be a replacement for ASL. Dr. Cornett expected that ASL would be the social and academic communication mode for deaf children, while Cued Speech would serve to support lipreading and language development. His goal was to increase deaf children’s literacy levels by helping children gain access to the English language, using visual cues that eased lipreading. Cued Speech works by making sounds that appear the same on the lips visually different through the use of hand cues.

Figure 1 Hands Holding Variant 1 (Monologue Position)

Use of Cues

Cueing while speaking provides unambiguous visual access to spoken language for people who cannot access sounds. Using cues one can differentiate words that are traditionally very difficult to lipread because they look the same on the mouth, such as mom, mop, and mob. Cued Speech consists of eight handshapes to signify consonant sounds and four placements and four movements to signify vowel sounds; the visual cues must be presented in conjunction with mouth movements representing speech (voiced or unvoiced) in order to be fully understood. Cued Speech can be learned in a weekend, although fluency takes time.

Not only do cues differentiate between closely mouthed words, but they can also be used to differentiate accents. For example, a person using Cued Speech can differentiate between a person from Maryland who says park and a person from Massachusetts who says pahk. Although the word is the same, the sounds are different and provide a clue as to a person’s background.

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