Deaf Culture: Chapter 8 - Navigating Lives

Everyday Societal Realities, Stereotyping, and Audism

• Societal Perceptions of Normalcy:

  • Unfamiliarity with Deaf individuals frequently causes discomfort among hearing people who have never encountered a deaf person, rooted in a lack of awareness regarding deaf capabilities.

  • Historical discrimination systematically excluded deaf people from core civic and professional activities, including prohibitions against operating motor vehicles and formal bans from matriculating into medical school to become physicians.

  • Teasing and peer marginalization frequently occur in hearing environments, as exemplified by Shanna Sorrells in her award-winning essay describing cafeteria ridicule:

  • "Don't laugh at me / Don't call me names / Don't get your pleasure from my pain / In god's eyes we're all the same!" (Sorrells, 2006, p. B21).

• Stereotyping and Linguistic Pathologization:

  • Stereotyping occurs when generalized, unverified judgments are applied universally to every member of a group.

  • Breakdowns in communication between deaf and hearing individuals regularly produce the derogatory stereotype that deaf individuals are "not capable" simply because they do not utilize spoken speech.

  • Clinical and educational frameworks routinely label sign languages and Deaf individuals under the diagnostic rubric of "Communication Disorders."

  • Deaf cultural perspectives challenge this categorization: a natural, complete human language cannot logically be categorized as a medical pathology or linguistic disorder.

  • Discrimination constitutes the enactment of tangible negative treatment or systemic exclusion directed against members of a marginalized group based on such stereotyping.

• Audism Defined:

  • Audism is defined as an institutionalized system of advantage and hearing superiority structured entirely upon hearing and speaking ability.

  • Audism manifests when institutions or individuals operate under the internalized presumption that hearing people are innately superior, more competent, or more deserving of authority than deaf people.

  • A historical example occurred in 1988, when the Gallaudet University Board of Trustees selected a hearing female candidate over two qualified deaf male candidates to serve as university president.

  • This decision triggered the historic Deaf President Now (DPN) civil rights protest, culminating in the appointment of I. King Jordan as the first deaf president of Gallaudet University.

• Trailblazing Profile — Dr. Nathie Marbury (1944–2013):

  • Reared in an impoverished Black family in Mississippi alongside 15 brothers and sisters.

  • Attended the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, an institution she credited with saving her life.

  • Became the first member of her family to attend and graduate from college.

  • Completed doctoral research investigating Black Deaf American identity contributors, cultural values, and systemic barriers (Marbury, 2007).

  • Shattered racial and linguistic barriers as the first Black Deaf instructor in multiple academic institutions, achieving renown as an American Sign Language (ASL) professor, poet, and cultural storyteller.

Employment Barriers, Attitudinal Obstacles, and Legal Protections

• Legal Frameworks and Systemic Employment Biases:

  • The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), enacted as a civil rights statute in 1990, explicitly prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities across public accommodations and employment.

  • Employers routinely hesitate to hire deaf professionals due to perceived communication barriers and internalized notions of hearing superiority, erroneously rationalizing non-hiring as practical management.

• Documented Employment Discrimination Vignettes:

  • The Library Senior Executive Interview (Bouton, 2013): A deaf woman who spoke clearly and possessed advanced qualifications completed a successful formal interview for a senior library position. Following the interview, executives invited her to a noisy bar for drinks. Because auditory conditions precluded speech comprehension in background noise, she could not participate in the conversation and was subsequently denied the position.

  • Psychology Internship Inquiries (Szymanski, 2010): In a highly competitive application cycle of approximately 20 psychology internship applications, Christen Szymanski disclosed her deafness on exactly half of the submissions and omitted it from the other half. The applications disclosing deafness generated zero interview invitations despite her qualifications. Conversely, every single application that omitted her deaf status resulted in an interview invitation, ultimately securing her a year-long internship.

  • Supervisory Promotion in Healthcare (Task Force on Health Care Careers for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Community, 2012): Trish Nolan, a veteran medical records technician possessing superior institutional seniority and exemplary performance evaluations, was repeatedly denied advancement to a supervisory role due to institutional skepticism regarding her deafness.

• Economic Stratification and Attitudinal Barriers:

  • Deaf individuals experience disproportionate rates of underemployment, elevated unemployment, and reduced lifetime earnings compared to hearing peers.

  • The deaf workforce remains heavily underrepresented in managerial and executive occupations, while remaining overrepresented in manual and manufacturing sectors.

  • Attitudinal barriers represent the most persistent impediment in professional spheres: authority figures and gatekeepers maintain low expectations and question the competence of deaf workers, regardless of demonstrated merit.

  • Despite systemic inequities, deaf professionals actively succeed in diverse disciplines, serving as physicians, nurses, laboratory technicians, architects, engineers, educators, cooks, and academic administrators.

Family Dynamics, Language Access, and the Cultivation of Resilience

• The Mechanics of Resilience:

  • Resilience is defined as the psychological capacity to recover, adapt, and persevere when confronting severe setbacks, systemic oppression, audism, and discrimination.

  • Deaf individuals cultivate resilience, strategic problem-solving, and inner resolve when resisting external barriers, as shown when deaf advocate Alec successfully navigated and challenged conference organizers who refused to supply sign language interpreters and demanded he supply his own.

• Family Foundations in Childhood:

  • More than 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents.

  • Early familial resilience depends on how rapidly hearing caregivers adapt: learning sign language, immersing themselves in Deaf cultural values, interacting with culturally Deaf adults, and joyfully accepting their deaf infant.

  • Culturally Deaf parents provide an immediate foundation of resilience by exposing deaf infants to natural visual sign language from birth, modeling healthy identity development, and teaching effective strategies for navigating a hearing-dominated society.

• Resilience in Mainstream and Educational Settings:

  • Because the overwhelming majority of deaf students are placed in mainstream educational environments, institutional support must include teachers who instruct directly through sign language, accessible deaf peer groups, and adult Deaf role models.

  • Developing resilience is further accelerated by participation in Deaf sports leagues, ASL-centered youth camps, and regional social gatherings where sign language serves as the primary mode of social discourse.

Systemic Disparities in Health, Mental Health, and Incarceration

• Physical Health Inequities:

  • Deaf individuals exhibit poorer overall health profiles, face systemic obstacles in obtaining medical care, and suffer premature mortality rates compared to hearing populations.

  • Research documents significantly elevated risks among deaf people for cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol, prediabetes, obesity, domestic violence, and suicide.

  • Critical deficits in accessible public health literature and physician-patient communication generate substantial health literacy gaps.

• Mental Health Services and Clinical Deficits:

  • Mental health denotes an individual's psychological, emotional, and behavioral equilibrium.

  • Profound shortages exist of mental health clinicians, psychiatrists, and therapists who are fluent in ASL or cognizant of Deaf cultural norms.

  • Professional sign language interpreters frequently lack specialized clinical training in psychiatric settings, heightening clinical diagnostic error.

  • Severe privacy and confidentiality concerns arise within tight-knit Deaf communities when third-party interpreters are used.

  • Therapeutic Confidentiality Breach Vignette: Leslie, seeking psychotherapy for intimate relationship and psychological challenges, could not locate an ASL-fluent therapist. She utilized an interpreter during sessions where she disclosed sensitive private sexual matters. Shortly thereafter, the identical interpreter arrived at Leslie's workplace to interpret a high-stakes executive corporate meeting, causing profound personal distress.

• Intimate Partner Violence and Domestic Abuse:

  • Domestic and intimate partner violence encompass physical assault, rape, sexual abuse, psychological coercion, robbery, and stalking.

  • Deaf adults experience heightened rates of partner violence, sexual harassment, and physical assault compared to the general population.

  • Seeking safety is severely compromised by lack of accessible hotlines, absence of sign-fluent shelter personnel, deficient legal-medical literacy, and justified fears regarding community confidentiality leaks.

• Criminal Justice and Correctional Injustices:

  • Deaf arrestees regularly encounter profound civil rights violations, including arresting officers handcuffing deaf suspects behind their backs—stripping them of their physical capacity to communicate.

  • Miranda warnings and legal interrogations frequently occur without certified legal interpreters; the majority of general sign language interpreters lack legal court credentials.

  • Incarcerated deaf people face severe social and administrative isolation in correctional facilities, lacking access to educational programming, notification sirens, and rehabilitation.

  • Facilities consistently fail to provide equal telecommunication access; in an incident documented by the advocacy organization HEARD (Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of Deaf and Disabled People), following formal complaints regarding abuse within the Florida Department of Corrections, a correctional guard threw the facility's sole teletypewriter (TTY) to the floor, smashing it while shouting, "Now try to call someone!"

• Gerontology and Older Deaf Adults:

  • Gerontology constitutes the scientific study of aging and the unique biological, social, and psychological issues confronting senior citizens.

  • Deaf seniors face acute isolation in assisted living facilities and nursing homes, as very few elder-care centers maintain sign-fluent nursing staff or deaf peer communities.

  • Deaf Seniors of America (DSA) serves as the primary national advocacy organization dedicated to improving access, healthcare parity, and socialization for aging Deaf adults.

Visual and Tactile Arts: The De'VIA Movement and Deaf Aesthetics

• Historical Scope of Deaf Artistic Expression:

  • Deaf visual and performing arts date back beyond the founding of the United States, originating in part with Deaf Native American art traditions, pictographs, and sign performances.

  • Deaf art spans traditional visual and tactile arts (drawings, painting, textile, sculpture), performance (theatre, dance, percussion), and literary and media arts.

• De'VIA (Deaf View/Image Art) Framework:

  • Established in 1989, De'VIA represents artwork created by Deaf artists specifically examining, expressing, and interpreting the Deaf experience through visual and cultural lenses.

  • De'VIA is partitioned into two dialectical categories: Resistance Art and Affirmative Art.

• Prominent De'VIA Works and Fine Artists:

  • Ann Silver: Renowned pop-art De'VIA artist whose seminal works synthesize civic and commercial iconography with Deaf cultural politics:

  • DEAF PRIDE, No. 2 (2013, with Jim VanManen): Parodies a commercial Tide detergent box, proclaiming "IT'S NOT JUST SIGN LANGUAGE, IT'S ASL."

  • ONE WAY / DEAF WAY (1996): Contrasts standard municipal directional street signs to symbolize Deaf epistemologies.

  • DEAF IDENTITY CRAYONS: Then & Now (1999): Contrasts an antique 1899 crayon box marked with historical slurs ("Dummy", "Lipreader", "Deaf-&-Dumb", "Hearing-Impaired", "Handicapped", "Oralist", "Deaf-Mute", "Freak") against a modern 1999 box bearing affirming identity markers ("CODA", "Seeing", "Deaf-Blind", "Late-Deafened", "Deaf-American", "Hard-of-Hearing", "Signer", "Deaf").

• Douglas Tilden (1860–1935): Celebrated California Deaf sculptor who studied in Paris; creator of the massive bronze Mechanics Monument (1901) situated at Market and Bush Streets in San Francisco.

• Matt Daigle and Kay Daigle: Created the internationally recognized International Breastfeeding Symbol; creators of the long-running webcomic That Deaf Guy, which highlights everyday cultural humor such as sleeping peacefully while a neighbor runs an unmuffled lawn mower at 6:00 AM on a Saturday.

• Maureen Klusza: Cartoonist known for The Greatest Irony, a Resistance piece contrasting a weeping deaf infant in handcuffs (denoting oralist language deprivation) with an ecstatic hearing infant freely signing "I Love You" via baby sign language.

• Shawn Richardson: Illustrator and graphic artist known for humorous cultural drawings including Bling-Bling Videophone Necklace.

• Mara Ladines: Deaf apparel designer and entrepreneur; owner and operator of the ByMara fashion boutique in New York City.

• Natasha Ofili: Deaf fashion influencer, designer, blogger, and creative director behind NIOVISION.

• Christine Sun Kim: Internationally acclaimed visual and sound artist exploring the spatial dynamics, physical materiality, and political dimensions of sound and ASL.

• Robyn Girard: Graphic designer and multimedia artist incorporating sign language performance into graphic layouts.

Deaf Performing Arts: Theatre, Dance, and Musical Expression

• Theatrical Institutions in Deaf Culture:

  • Residential schools for the deaf and regional Deaf clubs served historically as the foundational breeding grounds for theatrical performance, community revues, and dramatic storytelling.

  • National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD): Founded in 1967, NTD is the oldest continuously touring professional theatre company in the United States, celebrated for pioneering simultaneous ASL and spoken voice performance.

• Deaf West Theatre (DWT): Founded in Los Angeles in 1991, DWT operates a 90-seat theatre fitted with custom subwoofers mounted directly underneath the floorboards and seats, transmitting tactile acoustic vibrations throughout the house. DWT productions have garnered more than 80 major industry honors, including the critically acclaimed 2015 Broadway revival of the musical Spring Awakening.

• ProTactile / DeafBlind Theatre: Pioneered by DeafBlind theatre artists, this medium replaces visual staging with tactile and olfactory sensory modalities, exemplified by a multisensory production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet experienced exclusively through touch, physical proximity, and scent.

  • Deaf Musical and Rhythmic Performance:

• Deaf artists compose original rhythm, percussion, and dance centered on visual cadence and low-frequency vibrotactile feedback.

• Prinz-D: Known as "The First Deaf Rapper," performing internationally including concert appearances in Osaka, Japan.

• The Bison Song: Traditional athletic fight song and drum anthem performed at Gallaudet University, led by dynamic student spirit teams such as the 2009 ensemble featuring Cesar Ayala, Emily Jo Nochese, and drummer Vanessa Scarna.

• Professional Deaf Stage Interpreters: Artists such as JoAnn Benfield and Rosa Lee Timm (renowned for her ASL translation of Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to Do With It?") translate, analyze, and memorize musical lyrics into ASL. Stage interpreters mirror the exact physical cadences and stylistic movements of the lead musicians while coordinating with off-stage hearing feeder interpreters who feed discreet cues for tempo and transitions.

Deaf Representation in Media, Cultural Appropriation, and Allyship

• Milestones in Television and Cinema:

  • Marlee Matlin: Became the youngest recipient of the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1986 at age 21 for her starring performance in Children of a Lesser God.

  • CJ Jones: Deaf actor and comedian who collaborated directly with director James Cameron on Avatar: The Way of Water (Avatar 2) to invent and develop a bespoke Na'vi sign language dialect for the underwater Pandora clans.

  • Lauren Ridloff: Acclaimed Black Deaf actress who starred as Connie in AMC's The Walking Dead and as the superhero Makkari in Marvel Studios' Eternals.

• Cultural and Linguistic Appropriation in the Performing Arts:

  • Casting hearing actors to perform deaf roles represents a pervasive form of cultural appropriation, denying professional opportunities to deaf artists while distorting authentic sign language. For example, hearing actress Catalina Sandino Moreno, who lacked any prior background in sign language or the Deaf community, was cast as a deaf mother in the independent feature film Medeas.

  • The viral hashtag movement #DeafTalent was launched by Deaf artists and consumers to demand authentic casting, industry accountability, and ethical representation across Hollywood.

  • Online musical covers by hearing amateurs who sign popular songs on platforms like YouTube or TikTok for personal monetization or internet fame represent linguistic and cultural appropriation.

  • Such media often functions as "inspiration porn," designed to evoke sentimental pity or patronizing admiration from hearing audiences while failing to provide authentic linguistic access to Deaf consumers.

• The Nature of Allyship:

  • Activist Norma Morán, a Deaf Latina leader, asserts that allyship is not an identity or a permanent status, noting that "there is no such thing as an ally, but instead, acts of allyship."

  • Authentic allyship requires hearing individuals to step aside, preserve the creative spotlight for Deaf creators, refuse to profit off sign language, and actively support Deaf-led artistic productions.

ASL Literature: Traditions, Genres, and Literary Devices

• Oral Origins and Archival Preservation:

  • ASL literature is a rich oral tradition transmitted across generations throughout the United States and parts of Canada, preserved visually rather than via written notation.

  • The invention of motion picture technology at the turn of the 20th century enabled the permanent visual preservation of ASL oratory.

  • The earliest known film recording of sign language in the United States was produced in 1902, capturing an unidentified Deaf woman signing "The Star-Spangled Banner."

  • In 1913, George Veditz, past president of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), recorded his iconic cinematic presentation The Preservation of the Sign Language, declaring:

  • "As long as we have Deaf on earth, we will have signs. And as long as we have our films, we can preserve our beautiful signs in their old purity. I hope we all will love and guard our beautiful sign language as the noblest gift God has given to Deaf people." (NADvlogs, 2010).

• Taxonomy of ASL Literary Genres:

  • Folktales, community legends, and generational epics.

  • ASL poetry, expositions, fables, and tall tales.

  • Humorous anecdotes, riddles, puns, and jokes.

  • English-to-ASL literary adaptations and fairy tales.

  • Percussion songs, ASL rap, and rhythmic chants.

  • Visual Vernacular (VV): an advanced theatrical, cinematic signing style integrating mime, cinematic zoom techniques, shifting vantage points, and fast cutting.

  • ASL fingertutting: a modern, highly geometric street-dance hand choreography utilizing complex geometric angles, handshapes, and visual synchronization.

• Poetic Mechanics and Rhyme Schemes in Sign:

  • Unlike auditory poetry, which rhymes through phonetic phonemes, ASL poetry constructs aesthetic rhyme through five linguistic parameters:

  • Handshape rhyme (repetition of identical or related hand configurations).

  • Movement rhyme (synchronized directional trajectories, speeds, or repetitions).

  • Palm orientation rhyme (concordance in spatial alignment of the hands).

  • Non-manual signal rhyme (rhythmic cadence of facial grammar, brow position, and head movement).

  • Handedness rhyme (alternations or symmetrical balances between the dominant and non-dominant hands).

• Central Thematic Motifs in ASL Folk Narratives:

  • Triumphing Over Ignorant Hearing People: Narratives where deaf protagonists outsmart hearing figures who underestimate them.

  • Discovery and Crystallization of Deaf Identity: Formative epiphanies wherein deaf individuals emerge from oralist isolation to discover sign language and Deaf peers.

  • Leveraging Deafness: Tactical scenarios where deaf individuals turn sensory differences to their distinct advantage.

  • Self-Deprecating In-Group Humor: Jokes reserved exclusively for community insiders; hearing people cannot ethically tell these stories without committing offensive mockery.

• Prominent Cultural Stories and Folk Jokes:

  • The Motel Car Horn Joke (Nomeland & Nomeland, 2012): A deaf husband leaves his motel room at night to retrieve aspirin from his vehicle's glove compartment. Upon returning, he forgets his assigned room number in a long exterior row of identical units. Knowing the front office is closed, he leans hard on the car horn for several minutes. One by one, lights illuminate in every room along the motel row except one. He walks to the single dark room and rejoins his sleeping wife.

  • The Train Compartment Joke (Holcomb, 2013): A Russian, a Cuban, and a Deaf passenger share a train compartment. The Russian throws half a bottle of vodka out the window, declaring, "Oh, in my country, we have plenty of vodka." Moments later, the Cuban tosses an expensive, half-smoked cigar out the window, stating, "Oh, in my country, we have plenty of cigars." A hearing person then walks down the aisle; the Deaf traveler promptly throws the hearing person out the window, explaining, "Oh, in my world, we have plenty of hearing people."

  • The Shower Joke (Nomeland & Nomeland, 2012): A celebrated self-deprecating one-liner: "There's a good reason why I've never made much of my life. Every time opportunity knocked, I was in the shower with my hearing aid (or cochlear implant) on the sink."

  • Ray Harris's Childhood Memoir: In the autumn of 1944, seven-year-old Ray Harris was driven more than 200 miles by his hearing parents to the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind. A dormitory supervisor instructed the parents to depart quietly while Ray was distracted, avoiding an emotional goodbye. While Ray was looking at another student's World War II model airplane, his parents vanished. Though he missed his biological family deeply, Ray realized he was simultaneously being born into an expansive, lifelong family: the Deaf school, Deaf culture, and sign language.

• Intersectional ASL Literature:

  • The Nathie ASL Soul Project: Produced by members of the Intersectional Souls Project, this initiative featured Black Deaf women translating Dr. Nathie Marbury's written English poetry into recorded ASL, honoring her intersectional legacy.

Deaf Literature in Written English and Academic Periodicals

• Bilingual Literary Tradition:

  • American Deaf culture is inherently bilingual, encompassing works in both ASL and written English.

  • Written English literature authored by Deaf writers has historically been complicated by pedagogical trauma in residential and mainstream schools, where speech training, phonetic drills, and strict prescriptive grammar were overemphasized at the expense of literary analysis and creative expression.

  • Despite these barriers, Deaf authors have produced an extensive corpus of essays, poetry, memoirs, and mainstream fiction, both centered on and independent of Deaf themes.

• Community Journalism and Literary Magazines:

  • NADmag: The primary national periodical of the National Association of the Deaf, established in 1948 as a newspaper before evolving into a glossy visual newsmagazine.

• Historic Publications: Notable print serials include Deaf Life, The Buff and Blue (the student-run collegiate newspaper of Gallaudet University), and Deaf Echo.

• KissFist Magazine: A visual and cultural periodical disseminated from 2008 to 2014 by Child of Deaf Adults (CODA) editor Frank Gallimore and his Deaf sister, performance artist Rosa Lee Timm.

• Mainstream Bestselling Fiction: Connie Briscoe, an internationally celebrated Deaf African American novelist, authored numerous commercial bestselling novels, including Sisters & Lovers.

  • Academic Publishing in Native Sign Language:

• Journal of American Sign Language and Literature (JASLL): Founded by the non-profit organization ASLized, JASLL represents the first independent, peer-reviewed, open-access academic journal publishing scholarly articles and creative literature natively in digital ASL video format, ensuring deaf researchers can engage peer-reviewed literature directly in their primary language.

Deaf Cinematography, Digital Media, and Contemporary Pop Culture

• The Visual Grammar of the "Deaf Lens":

  • Deaf cinema utilizes distinct cinematic conventions reflecting visual spatial ways of being, known collectively as the "Deaf Lens":

  • Visual Rhythm: Editing cadences and camera tracking that mirror the natural cadence of signed discourse.

  • Visual Representation of Sound: Rendering acoustic events through deliberate visual metaphors (e.g., an extreme macro close-up of a metal spoon tapping against a glass bowl).

  • Deaf Views of the Deaf Self: Visual metaphors of oppression and liberation (e.g., an extreme close-up of an ear mold being slowly extracted from an ear canal, symbolizing emancipation from oralist constraints).

  • Gaze Tracking and Eye Contact: Composing shots so that sightlines between actors guide the narrative arc, foreshadow plot twists, and punctuate dramatic climaxes.

  • Fluidity of Camera Movement: Smooth, continuous camera movements that match the visual shifts of a native signer.

  • Original ASL Screenplays: Utilizing native sign-recorded scripts during pre-production rather than translating written English dialogue.

  • Superimposition and Visual Splices: Layering multiple footage streams simultaneously to construct complex, multi-perspective narration.

• Digital Cinema and Visual Arts Pioneers:

  • Storm Smith: Trailblazing Black Deaf filmmaker, artistic director, and head of Thunderography Films, known for commercials, short films, and visual storytelling.

  • Kaori Takeuchi: Visual artist and filmmaker who founded the "ASL Manga" genre, fusing Japanese graphic narrative traditions with American Sign Language.

• Deaf Professional Photographers: Deaf photographers cite their visual orientation as a creative asset that eliminates auditory distractions. When interrupted during photo shoots by hearing bystanders offering unsolicited advice, many smile, sign "I'm Deaf," and refocus directly on their viewfinder.

  • New Media, News Broadcasting, and Digital Comedy:

• Sign1News: A digital news network providing daily news in ASL, featuring prominent deaf anchors such as Jethro Wooddall, Candace Jones, and Crystal Cousineau.

• Deafies in Drag: A popular social media and YouTube comedy series produced by Latinx Deaf drag queens Selena Minogue and Casavina, satirizing audism, intersectionality, and both Deaf and hearing cultural tropes.

• Philosophical Appraisals of Visual Language:

  • Poet Jim Cohn (1986) observed: "I do not believe it is coincidence that what deaf people DO with language is what hearing poets try to MAKE their language do."

  • Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau noted in his 1754 treatise on the origins of language:

  • "Although the language of gesture and spoken language are equally natural, still the first is easier and depends less upon conventions. For more things affect our eyes than our ears. Also, visual forms are more varied than sounds, and more expressive, saying more in less time." (Bauman, Nelson, & Rose, 2006, p. xv).