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The ability to communicate effectively requires individuals to possess knowledge in a number of areas as well as the skill to apply this knowledge in a wide range of practical communication contexts. Understanding the syntactic and semantic systems, and the ability to put this knowledge into practice are necessary, but not sufficient, to be a competent communicator. In order to be considered a competent communicator it is necessary also to be able to apply pragmatic rules appropriately in the variety of interactional contexts which occur in person to person interaction. / It has been shown (e.g., Bench, 1992; Luetke-Stahlman & Luckner, 1991) that profoundly deaf children have difficulty in understanding and applying syntactic and semantic rules at the same levels of proficiency as their normally hearing peers. Major causes underlying this difference are the greatly reduced amount of linguistic input typically received by profoundly deaf children and the imperfect quality of that input, even when appropriate amplification is used. These conditions, in association with greatly reduced opportunity for profoundly deaf children to interact with more mature communicators, negatively affect the acquisition and application of syntactic and semantic rules. / The hypotheses of this study are: (a) that these same conditions also result in difficulties for profoundly deaf children in understanding and applying pragmatic rules and strategies in various interactional contexts, and, (b)that the nature and extent of this difficulty has a negative impact on profoundly deaf children’s face-to-face interactions through the use of inappropriate or unproductive responses to the demands of the communicative context, to the demands of the listener, and to the demands of the interaction process. / A referential communication task paradigm was employed to elicit face-to-face interactions between pairs of normally hearing students and profoundly deaf students, both from oral educational settings and educational settings in which sign is used. The tasks employed to elicit these interactions were designed to necessitate the use of pragmatic skills in order for the interactions to be completed successfully. Transcripts of the interactions were analysed for their effectiveness. A number of pragmatic skills were considered; these included the appropriateness and effectiveness of speakers’ responses to the contextual requirements of the different communication tasks, the appropriateness and effectiveness of speakers’ responses to the requirements of their listener, and the appropriateness and effectiveness of speaker and listener responses of the interactional process. / Since the participants’ performances are an overt expression of the speakers’ and listeners’ conceptions of their role in face-to-face interaction, the interactions provide insights into the metacommunication knowledge of profoundly deaf children and normally hearing children. It is predicted that because of the reduction in the quantity and quality of interactions in which profoundly deaf children are involved, their capacity to apply pragmatic rules appropriately in face-to-face interactions will be less effective than that of their normally hearing peers. / Other areas considered were the degree to which there was improvement with age in the use of pragmatic skills, and the degree to which the communicative performance of the students from oral settings resembled that of the normally hearing students, given that all the orally educated students were enrolled in integrated educational settings and, thus, had daily interaction with normally hearing students. It is predicted that there will be improvement with age in the skills being considered. It is further predicted that because of the day to day contact the oral students have with normally hearing and normally communicating peers, the performance of the oral students will more closely resemble the performance of the normally hearing group than the profoundly deaf group who sign. / The results of the study showed there were significant differences between the normally hearing group and the profoundly deaf group in the overall effectiveness of the interactions, with the normally hearing group being more effective than either the oral group or the sign group. Similarly, there were significant differences between the normally hearing students and the two groups of profoundly deaf students in their ability to apply appropriately pragmatic knowledge to their interactions, suggesting that there are also differences between the normally hearing and the profoundly deaf groups in metacommunication knowledge. Some differences in pragmatic use between the oral group and the sign group were also found. / Reasons for the difference in metacommunication knowledge and poor pragmatic performance, which are likely to originate in the early communicative environment and the early educational management of the profoundly deaf children, are suggested. The implications these findings have on current pragmatic acquisition theory for both normally hearing and profoundly deaf children are discussed, as is the significance of the findings on current practice in the education of profoundly deaf children. Areas for subsequent research arising from this study are suggested.