8.3 Contact Sign / PSE / CASE, Cued Speech Mechanics, and the Rochester Method

8.3 Contact Sign / PSE / CASE, Cued Speech Mechanics, and the Rochester Method

Quick Answer: Beyond autonomous ASL and rigid MCE systems, educational interpreters encounter intermediate and alternative visual communication modes. Contact Sign Language (formerly called Pidgin Signed English [PSE]) and Conceptually Accurate Signed English (CASE) utilize authentic ASL lexical signs placed in English syntactic word order (Subject-Verb-Object), maintaining conceptual fidelity while omitting artificial MCE affixes. Cued Speech, developed in 1966 by Dr. R. Orin Cornett, is not a sign language or manual code, but an auditory-visual phonemic communication system utilizing 8 handshapes (consonants) in 4 facial placements (vowels) synchronized with natural speechreading to visually disambiguate spoken phonemes (resolving the dilemma that 60% to 70% of spoken sounds are visually hidden or homophenous). Cued Speech is delivered in schools by certified Cued Language Transliterators (CLTs). Finally, the Rochester Method (Visible English), introduced in 1878 by Zenas Westervelt, mandated simultaneous speech and manual fingerspelling of every single letter; it was abandoned due to severe physical exhaustion, repetitive strain injuries, and a devastating communication bottleneck averaging under 80 words per minute.

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1. Contact Sign and PSE: Sociolinguistic Evolution and Reality

For decades in American deaf education, signing that combined features of ASL and English was universally referred to as Pidgin Signed English (PSE). However, candidates taking the EIPA Written Test must understand why modern sociolinguistics has fundamentally revised this terminology.

Why "Pidgin" is a Sociolinguistic Misnomer

In general linguistic theory, a pidgin develops when two groups of people speaking mutually unintelligible languages come into contact (typically for trade) and neither group knows the other's tongue. The speakers create a simplified, crude contact communication code characterized by a restricted vocabulary, an absence of complex grammar, and no native speakers. When children are born into a pidgin-speaking community and internalize that pidgin as their native tongue, it expands into a grammatically complex, natural creole.

In landmark research, sociolinguists Dr. Ceil Lucas and Dr. Clayton Valli (1992) demonstrated that signing that blends ASL and English does not fit the definition of a true pidgin:

• Two Mature Languages in Contact: Contact between deaf and hearing signers does not involve two groups with no shared language inventing a crude trade jargon. It involves a fully formed natural visual-gestural language (ASL) and a fully formed natural spoken/written language (English).
• Bilingual Code-Switching and Interference: What was previously called "PSE" is actually a dynamic, variable contact phenomenon known in sociolinguistics as Contact Signing (or Contact Sign Language). Contact signers do not use a fixed, rule-governed pidgin; rather, they engage in bilingual code-switching, lexical borrowing, and syntactic shifting along a multi-dimensional continuum, influenced by the language background of their communicative partner, the formal educational setting, and topic register.

   [ Pure Natural ASL ] ◄─────── [ Contact Signing Continuum ] ───────► [ Spoken English ]
   • Visual-spatial syntax       • ASL lexical signs                  • Acoustic-vocal
   • Topic-comment structure     • English word order (S-V-O)         • Linear auditory
   • Non-manual grammar          • Conceptual accuracy maintained      • Spoken morphology
   • Spatial referencing loci    • English mouthing / dropped affixes • Auditory phonemes

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2. Conceptually Accurate Signed English (CASE)

In response to the artificiality of SEE II and the variability of informal contact signing, deaf educators and interpreter training programs formulated Conceptually Accurate Signed English (CASE).

The Core Philosophy of CASE

CASE is a deliberate transliteration approach where the signer enforces two non-negotiable linguistic rules:

1. Maintain English Syntactic Order: Signs are produced in standard English grammatical word order (Subject-Verb-Object), allowing the interpreter to mouth spoken English words simultaneously without syntactic distortion.
2. Preserve ASL Conceptual Accuracy: Signs are selected based strictly on their true semantic meaning in ASL, totally rejecting the SEE II Two-out-of-Three Rule and eliminating invented MCE bound affixes (-tion, -ness, -ment).

Comparative Analysis: CASE vs. SEE II Across Everyday English Idioms

The EIPA PSE / CASE Performance Track

Boys Town National Research Hospital explicitly offers an EIPA PSE Track (evaluating Contact Sign / CASE). Candidates choosing this track are evaluated on their ability to maintain English grammatical pacing while demonstrating immaculate sign vocabulary selection, conceptual accuracy, natural English mouthing, and visual clarity without resorting to invented artificial affixes.

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3. Cued Speech: Foundations, History, and Purpose

A critical distinction on the EIPA Written Exam is that Cued Speech is NOT a sign language, NOT a manual code, and NOT related to American Sign Language. It is an auditory-visual, phonemic communication system designed to visually represent spoken language.

Dr. R. Orin Cornett and the Gallaudet Literacy Dilemma (1966)

In the mid-1960s, Dr. R. Orin Cornett, a physicist and Vice President of Long-Range Planning at Gallaudet College, was deeply troubled by the persistent national finding that deaf students graduated from high school with severe reading comprehension deficits. Cornett recognized that reading a phonetically based written script (such as alphabetic English text) requires an internal cognitive representation of the language's phonological system—an awareness of the discrete sounds (phonemes) that make up words.

The Speechreading Dilemma and Homophenous Sounds

Why couldn't deaf children acquire spoken English phonology through speechreading (lipreading)? Cornett analyzed the visual optics of spoken English and documented the Speechreading Dilemma:

• The 30% to 40% Visibility Limit: Only 30% to 40% of spoken English phonemes are visually distinguishable on the lips and face. The remaining 60% to 70% are produced invisibly inside the oral cavity or throat (e.g., /k/, /g/, /h/, /ng/).
• Homophenous Phonemes: Many completely different spoken sounds produce identical visual mouth shapes (homophenes). To a speechreader, the consonant phonemes /p/, /b/, and /m/ look 100% identical because all three are bilabial sounds (formed by closing both lips). A deaf child cannot visually distinguish between the spoken words pat, bat, and mat, or pan, ban, and man.
• Similarly, /t/, /d/, and /n/ look identical on the lips (alveolar sounds: tie, die, night), as do /f/ and /v/ (labiodental sounds: fan, van), and /ch/ and /j/ (affricates: chump, jump).

Cornett concluded that expecting a deaf child to master English literacy through speechreading was cognitively impossible: it was the equivalent of reading a printed book with two-thirds of the letters blacked out. In 1966, Cornett invented Cued Speech to solve this visual ambiguity.

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4. Mechanics of Cued Speech: Handshapes, Placements, and Phonemic Integration

Cued Speech operates through an elegant, rule-governed mathematical pairing of manual cues with natural mouth movements:

   ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
   │                THE CUED SPEECH SYSTEM                  │
   └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                               │
         ┌─────────────────────┼─────────────────────┐
         ▼                     ▼                     ▼
    8 HANDSHAPES          4 PLACEMENTS         MOUTH MOVEMENTS
   (Represent Groups    (Represent Groups     (Natural Visible
    of Consonants)         of Vowels)          Lip Articulation)
         │                     │                     │
         └─────────────────────┼─────────────────────┘
                               ▼
              100% VISUAL PHONEMIC DISAMBIGUATION
             (Every English Syllable Visible in Real Time)

The 8 Consonant Handshapes

Consonant phonemes are divided into eight groups. Homophenous sounds (sounds that look identical on the lips) are deliberately assigned to different handshapes:

1. Handshape 1 (d, p, zh): Index finger pointing upward (e.g., /d/ as in day, /p/ as in pen).
2. Handshape 2 (k, v, z, th [voiced]): Index and middle fingers extended in a V-shape (e.g., /k/ as in cat, /v/ as in van, /th/ as in that).
3. Handshape 3 (s, r): Index, middle, and ring fingers extended, or modified spread (e.g., /s/ as in sun, /r/ as in red).
4. Handshape 4 (b, n, hw): Four fingers extended, thumb folded across palm (e.g., /b/ as in bed, /n/ as in nut, /wh/ as in where).
5. Handshape 5 (m, f, t): Open 5-handshape with all fingers extended (e.g., /m/ as in mom, /f/ as in fun, /t/ as in top).
6. Handshape 6 (w, l, sh): Index finger and thumb extended forming an 'L' shape (e.g., /w/ as in wet, /l/ as in lip, /sh/ as in ship).
7. Handshape 7 (j, g, th [unvoiced]): Index finger and thumb touching or curved (e.g., /j/ as in jam, /g/ as in go, /th/ as in think).
8. Handshape 8 (ch, y, ng): Middle finger and thumb touching with index raised (e.g., /ch/ as in chair, /y/ as in yes, /ng/ as in sing).

The 4 Vowel Facial Placements

Vowel phonemes are represented by placing the cue hand at one of four distinct anatomical locations around the face and throat:

1. Mouth / Side of Mouth: Represents vowel sounds /ee/ (as in feet), /ur/ (as in bird), and vowel-consonant glides.
2. Chin: Represents vowel sounds /e/ (as in pet) and /oe/ (as in boat).
3. Throat / Larynx: Represents vowel sounds /oo/ (as in boot), /i/ (as in bit), and /a/ (as in father).
4. Side of Face / Cheek / Jaw: Represents vowel sounds /ah/ (as in bath), /aw/ (as in bought), and /uh/ (as in but).

The Synthesis of Disambiguation in Practice

How does this eliminate the homophenous confusion between /m/, /b/, and /p/?

• Consider the spoken words: meet, beat, and feet:
  • All three words share the identical vowel sound /ee/ (articulated at the Mouth placement).
  • On the lips, the speaker produces natural lip movements.
  • To cue meet, the transliterator places Handshape 5 (/m/) at the mouth.
  • To cue beat, the transliterator places Handshape 4 (/b/) at the mouth.
  • To cue feet, the transliterator places Handshape 5 (/f/) at the mouth, but the mouth movement clearly shows top teeth touching the bottom lip (differentiating it from /m/).
• Result: The deaf student receives complete, 100% visual access to the exact phonemic composition of the spoken word in real time, fostering native-level phonemic awareness, rhyming ability, reading decoding, and English syntax.

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5. Cued Language Transliterators (CLTs) vs. Educational Interpreters

Educational interpreters must recognize the legal, administrative, and professional differences between sign language interpreting and cued language transliteration:

Professional and Functional Distinctions

• Educational Sign Language Interpreter: Facilitates communication between two distinct languages (ASL and spoken English) or translates spoken English into an engineered sign code (CASE, SEE II). The interpreter uses visual-spatial grammar, classifier predicates, or manual sign vocabulary.
• Cued Language Transliterator (CLT): Does not sign. A CLT delivers real-time, verbatim phonemic transliteration of spoken classroom discourse using Cued Speech handshapes and placements synchronized with natural lip movements. A CLT must cue every spoken syllable verbatim, including teacher lectures, peer questions, hesitations, and environmental audio.

Certification and Licensure Standards

• Sign language interpreters are certified through the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) or evaluated via the Boys Town EIPA.
• Cued Language Transliterators are credentialed through the Testing, Evaluation, and Certification Unit (TECUnit), the national certification body for Cued Speech practitioners. TECUnit administers:
  • The Cued Language Transliterator State Level Assessment (CLTSLA)
  • The National Cued Language Transliterator Examination (NCLTE)

Legal IEP Mandates

If a deaf student's Individualized Education Program (IEP) stipulates Cued Speech / Cued English as the student's primary communication mode under IDEA, a public school district cannot substitute a sign language interpreter. The school is legally obligated to provide a certified or state-qualified Cued Language Transliterator. Substituting an ASL interpreter denies the student FAPE and violates federal special education law.

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6. The Rochester Method (Visible English / Neo-Oralism)

To appreciate modern visual systems, educational interpreters must understand the most extreme manual English experiment in American history: The Rochester Method.

Origin at the Rochester School for the Deaf (1878)

In 1878, Dr. Zenas Westervelt, superintendent of the Western New York Institution for Deaf-Mutes (now the Rochester School for the Deaf), developed a communication methodology known as Visible English, later universally termed The Rochester Method.

Westervelt operated under a strict pedagogical philosophy:

• He vehemently rejected natural ASL, arguing that signs were "crude gestures" that corrupted English grammar.
• However, he also recognized that pure oralism was failing because speechreading was too ambiguous.
• His radical solution: Simultaneous spoken English combined with manual fingerspelling of every single letter of every single word.

   The Rochester Method Formula:
   Spoken English Pronunciation  +  Verbatim Manual Fingerspelling of Every Letter
   (Zero Signs Permitted ── Everything Fingerspelled from 'A' to 'Z')

Mechanics and Classroom Application

Under the Rochester Method, no signs were permitted anywhere on the school campus—neither in classrooms, nor in dining halls, nor on playgrounds. Teachers, dormitory counselors, and students were required to speak English while their dominant hand rapidly fingerspelled every letter in real time:

• To convey the sentence: "The magnificent presidential library contains thousands of historical manuscripts", the teacher had to speak the sentence while fingerspelling all 75 individual letters consecutively.

Why the Rochester Method Collapsed and Was Abandoned

While the Rochester Method was celebrated by oralist sympathizers for nearly a century (persisting into the 1970s), it was ultimately abandoned across the United States due to three fatal human constraints:

1. Severe Physical Fatigue and Musculoskeletal Injury: Fingerspelling every letter of continuous speech required thousands of rapid, repetitive fine-motor finger twitches per hour. Teachers and interpreters suffered devastating rates of carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis, and muscle spasms.
2. The Communication Velocity Bottleneck: While normal spoken English flows at 130 to 180 words per minute, rapid manual fingerspelling hits a biological ceiling of 60 to 80 words per minute. Classroom instruction crawled to an agonizingly slow pace. Teachers could cover only a fraction of the standard academic curriculum.
3. Perceptual and Cognitive Exhaustion for Students: Deaf children forced to watch hours of non-stop, blurred fingerspelling suffered severe ocular fatigue and headaches. Cognitively, the child's working memory was overwhelmed decoding isolated individual letters, leaving zero cognitive capacity for higher-order conceptual synthesis, scientific reasoning, or critical analysis.

By the late 1970s and 1980s, the Rochester Method was entirely phased out, replaced by Total Communication, MCE systems, and the burgeoning ASL bilingual movement.

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7. Master Comparative Matrix: All Visual Communication Modes

The following matrix provides a comprehensive comparative reference synthesizing every visual communication mode evaluated on the EIPA Written Exam:

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8. Realistic K-12 Classroom Scenarios

Scenario A: Elementary Phonics and Literacy Instruction with a CLT

In a kindergarten classroom, the reading specialist conducts an explicit phonemic awareness lesson on word families, asking students to identify the rhyming sounds in cat, hat, bat, and mat.

• Transliteration Dynamic: The deaf student utilizes Cued Speech, supported by a certified Cued Language Transliterator (CLT). As the teacher speaks, the CLT produces the chin placement (/a/) followed by the throat cue for /t/.
• Disambiguating Homophenes: When the teacher presents bat and mat, which appear identical on the lips, the CLT executes Handshape 4 for bat and Handshape 5 for mat. The student immediately identifies the different initial consonants and successfully identifies the rhyming pattern, demonstrating intact phonological processing.

Scenario B: Secondary English Literature: CASE vs. Literal MCE

In a 10th-grade English class studying Shakespeare's Macbeth, the teacher discusses Lady Macbeth's quote: "Out, damned spot! out, I say!" and explains: "Lady Macbeth is consumed by guilt and losing her grip on reality."

• Sign Selection Dilemma: If an interpreter applied literal SEE II principles to "losing her grip on reality", they would sign LOSE + -ING + HER + physical hand grasping GRIP + ON + REALITY.
• CASE Application: The educational interpreter utilizes Conceptually Accurate Signed English (CASE). The interpreter maintains English word order and mouthing, but signs: ME-HER + CONTROL + SLIP-AWAY + TRUE + WORLD + DISAPPEAR. The student grasps Lady Macbeth's psychological unraveling rather than visualizing an imaginary physical object slipping from her hand.

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9. Exam Traps & Strategic Distinctions

[!WARNING] Exam Trap 1: Categorizing Cued Speech as a Sign Language or Manual Code. This is one of the most reliable distractors on the EIPA Written Test. Cued Speech is NOT a sign language, contains zero ASL signs, and is not an MCE code. It is an auditory-visual sound-spelling / phonemic communication system designed to make spoken phonemes visible.

[!CAUTION] Exam Trap 2: Believing Contact Sign / PSE Has Formal Grammatical Inventions. Contact Sign / CASE does not possess invented affixes or artificial grammatical markers. It is an organic contact variety that utilizes ASL lexical items in English word order with variable English mouthing.

[!NOTE] Exam Trap 3: The Rochester Method Misconception. Test items often ask whether the Rochester Method utilized invented signs like SEE II. The answer is no: the Rochester Method permitted zero signs—it consisted strictly of simultaneous speech and fingerspelling of every single letter.