Deaf in America's Introduction

  • lowercase deaf when referring to audiological condition of not hearing
  • uppercase Deaf when referring to a particular group of deaf people who share language and culture
  • deaf - person who can’t hear
  • Deaf - deaf person immersed in their culture
  • self-identification is an important diagnostic in deciding who is Deaf
  • there is a lot of diversity in the Deaf community
    • different signed languages
    • distinctive identities within locations, even in the same signed language
  • because of segregation, there is a white and a black variety of ASL
  • there are people with severe or profound hearing impairment who do not participate in the community of Deaf people
  • school plays an important role in the community
    • residential schools: state and funded boarding schools for deaf children. through high school
    • return home only for weekends and holidays
    • ORAL - disallow use of signed language
    • MANUAL - signed language is allowed 
      • educational policy still emphasizes speech and English
    • in the dorms, deaf children are introduced to the social life of Deaf people
    • public school
  • ASL is independent of English
    • verbs can be separated into 3 classes
    • different sentence structure

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