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Manually Coded English (MCE) is an umbrella term referring to a number of invented manual codes intended to visually represent the exact grammar and morphology of spoken English. Different codes of MCE vary in the levels of adherence to spoken English grammar, morphology, and syntax. MCE is typically used in conjunction with direct spoken English.

Manually Coded English systems

Manually Coded English (MCE) is the result of language planning efforts in multiple countries, especially the United States in the 1970s. Four systems were developed in attempts to represent spoken English manually; Seeing Essential English (also referred to as Morphemic Signing System (MSS) or SEE-1), Signing Exact English (SEE-2 or SEE), Linguistics of Visual English (LOVE), or Signed English (SE). System developers and educators disagree on the relative accuracy and appropriateness of these four representations. MCE is different from American Sign Language, which is a natural language with a distinct morphology, lexicon, and syntax. Rather, North American varieties of MCE borrow some lexical items of American Sign Language (although meanings and morphology may be significantly constrained or altered) while attempting to strictly follow English morphology, syntax, and word order. Deaf sign languages make use of non-sequential morphology, spatial relationships, facial expression, and body positioning, while MCE does not take advantage of Deaf sign language features which do not exist in spoken English, with a "spatially restricted, sequential structure along with a strict word order".

Seeing Essential English/Morphemic Signing System

SEE-1 was the first American manual English code, developed in the 1960s and 70s by David Anthony, a teacher of deaf and disabled children. Anthony identified a list of proposed basic English words, less than half of which he identified American Sign Language (ASL) signs for, as well as a number of slightly different English words which ASL represented similarly with "only minor" stress and movement variations. Conversely, some English words could be expressed with multiple different ASL signs. Additionally, ASL, unlike English, is a zero copula language, so does not have lexical signs corresponding to English copulas like "is" and "are". Nielson et al. argue that SEE-1/MSS is a poor representation of English because it has only 14 bound morphemes in its citation form, noting that it has not been well-studied since the 1990s, and as of the paper's publishing in 2016, was only in use in Amarillo, TX.

Signing Exact English (SEE-2/SEE)

Signing Exact English (SEE) is the most commonly studied and taught manual code for American English. SEE incorporates a large number of signs which are borrowed from ASL. Where English differs lexically from ASL (such as concepts with multiple near-synonymous words in English but only one or two corresponding ASL signs) the handshape of the ASL sign was generally modified to reflect the first letter of the intended English word. Analogous variation in ASL (where multiple ASL signs all translate to a single English word) is not distinguished in SEE. Supalla and McKee give the example of "right." In ASL, three distinct signs represent distinct meanings ('correct,' 'opposite of left,' and 'entitlement') which are all represented by the single word "right" in both English and SEE.

Although some research suggests that experience can improve the degree to which the information coded in English (morphologically as well as syntactically) is successfully communicated manually, especially by learners who are hearing and/or already fluent in spoken English, multiple studies have identified a number of potential concerns about the use of MCE systems in place of a natural language. The morphological structure of nearly all MCE systems is very different from the structure of documented sign languages. As a result, deaf children exposed only to MCE acquire the artificially created English-like bound morphology of MCE systems later than their hearing peers. Additionally, deaf children being taught MCE show an "anomalous" pattern of use with these morphemes. For example, they are frequently analyze morphemes that are bound in English, such as "-ing," as free morphemes, separating these morphemes from the contexts they are bound to in English and placing them elsewhere in a construction, producing sentences that are judged as ungrammatical by hearing English users. Notably, neither typically developing hearing children acquiring spoken English nor deaf children acquiring ASL as a first language display these patterns of anomalous syntactic acquisition.

Another potential issue with MCE use is the rate of information flow. Studies on rate of signing MCE suggest that some systems may take up to two and a half times the amount of time necessary to transmit the same information in either spoken English or American Sign Language. Researchers suggest that this may significantly disrupt communication using these systems, as it may lead to an excessive load on the short term memory compared to natural languages.

In English-speaking countries, some users of Deaf sign languages will code-switch into a form of MCE when conversing with someone whose dominant language is English, or when quoting something from English, although contact signing may be more common. MCE is also sometimes favored by some hearing people, for whom a manual version of their own language is perceived as easier to learn than a deaf sign language. However, multiple studies suggest that many hearing users of MCE systems may struggle to communicate effectively or comprehensively using these systems.

In education

The different forms of manually coded English were originally developed for use in the education of deaf children in English-speaking countries, based on the assumption that a signing system that was closer to English would make it easier for deaf children to communicate in written and/or spoken English, which many parents and educators perceive as superior or more desirable to using a Deaf sign language. MCE was proposed to improve the speed and capacity of deaf children's reading, as their literacy in written English has been typically low compared to their hearing peers.

An early form of this educational method was popularized by Abbé Charles-Michel de l'Epee who in the 1790s developed a method using hand-signs to teach a form of the French language to deaf children. L'Epee distinguished signs used in Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris, the school he founded, into two categories: "Natural Signs," or Old French Sign Language, the language used by his students in the community, and "Methodical Signs," which was designed to encourage students to sign in the syntax of French. These constructed "Methodical Signs," however, had already fallen out of use by the 1830s, as the school's third director, Roche-Ambrose Bébian, wrote about their structural failings - especially the distortion of sign language structure - relative to "Natural Signs" and ended their use within the school. "Methodical Signs" fell out of favor in Europe and America, and " the idea of intervening in the natural development of sign language and restructuring signs in accordance with the grammar of spoken language was not revived again until the popularization of MCE in the 1970s." Education is still the most common setting where manually coded English is used; not only with deaf students, but also children with other kinds of speech or language difficulties.

The use of MCE in deaf education is controversial. Contemporary deaf education can follow one or a number of educational philosophies and reform efforts, including education in the local natural deaf sign language, education in a colonial sign language, bilingual-bicultural, Total Communication, a manually coded system based off of the ambient spoken language (such as MCE), or oralism.

One major obstacle to the utility and enforcement of the use of MCE is the criteria used to evaluate it. Multiple researchers note that MCE use by deaf children acquiring it as a first language is typically evaluated according to its adherence to citation forms of spoken English (i.e., MCE utterances are evaluated as if they were spoken English utterances) rather than its intelligibility as a form of communication or a language. Moreover, many studies which evaluate the competence of hearing teachers of the deaf in MCE communication do not evaluate the extent to which deaf students understand what their teachers are expressing. These teachers reported avoiding using spoken English words or constructions that they did not know how to express in MCE, limiting their overall language use. While many studies have found MCE to be comprehensible to those familiar with the code, fewer have attempted to evaluate whether it is equivalently suitable for first language acquisition, given the frequency of morpheme deletion or ellipsis.

In a study of prelingually deaf children taught exclusively using MCE, S. Supalla documented that these individuals displayed spontaneous (without prior exposure), ASL-like innovations. Specifically, rather than using the MCE morphemes designed to mark case, tense, and gender as they are in English, these children demonstrated the use of deictic pointing and spatial modification of verbs, linguistic features not part of MCE because they are considered unique to signed languages.

Finally, the ethics of MCE use is also a matter of contention. ASL is a minority language in North America. The majority of deaf individuals are born to hearing parents, and are not exposed to ASL from a young age. Many Deaf adults raise issues with the manipulation of a minority groups' language in order to enforce learning of the majority language onto children from that minority group. Many hearing parents are encouraged to expose their child to MCE instead of ASL, which delays a child's access to a natural sign language. Additionally, cognitive delays and lower academic achievement may result from or be exacerbated by a lack of complete or comprehensible input by teachers using MCE instead of ASL.