Verbal Routines in a Blind Korean Child’s Language Acquisition

Abstract

This study investigates the strategies that a blind child uses to learn language in the absence of visual input. For the last several decades, numerous studies on blind children’s language learning have reported that many blind children use formulaic expressions and verbal routines in their speech; these expressions are composed of several unanalyzed chunks and are used as whole utterances. In this study, the data were collected from one visually impaired Korean child between 24 and 30 months. The child was audio- and video-recorded, and all data were transcribed. The Korean blind child used many verbal routines and formulaic expressions. The results support the ‘use first, analyze later’ strategy (Peters, 1987) in that the child used verbal routines creatively in different conversational contexts and became aware of meaning and the usage of formulaic expressions. This study shows that blind children can be actively involved in their own language learning and that through verbal routines, they learn not only linguistic structures but also social interactions.