MJ Bienvenu - Resistance to American Deaf Culture

• Ethnocentrism: belief that their culture is the best
  • people in America grow up believing that everyone should have five senses
  • focus on lack of sound - believe Deaf people are handicapped
  • many people equate language and speech - assume Deaf people can't have a language
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• Language Bigotry: my language is the only true language
  • power of majority culture can be used to annihilate a language
  • Replacement: replacing ASL with oralism
  • Dialectilization: forces minority language to become a part of the majority language
    • linguistic mainstreaming
    • Manually Coded English
• No Deaf City, USA
  • no central geographical location
  • they do gather geographically ➝ residential schools, Deaf clubs, state and national associations, etc.
• Only 10% Acquire ADC from Family
  • typically, a child acquires language and culture from their parents / their environments
  • bc 90% of Deaf people are born to Hearing parents, children are not enculturated until school
• Blocking Recognition of ASL
  • Department of Education doesn’t recognize ASL as a language (1994)
  • Also not recognized by federal govt.
• Deaf Community doesn’t equal Deaf Culture
  • not all deaf people are members of ADC
  • people who become deaf at later ages are likely not enculturated ut are asked to speak for the community because they have intelligible speech”
• Legislation Promotes Disabled View
• Pathological Mindset in Education
  • oralism and the banning of ASL in classrooms had detrimental effects on deaf children
  • bc deafness is viewed as a handicap, teachers have low expectations many instructors in Deaf Education don’t have to pass ASL proficiency requirements
  • focus on speech, audiology, and language deficiency
  • don’t focus on deaf culture
• Communication is “Good Enough”
  • language is used to communicate but you can communicate without language (body language, face usage, etc)
• Scientific Community Wants to Cure
  • deaf people are viewed as disabled, rather than a cultural and linguistic minority
  • easier for experimental methods to be used in the name of science
  • ex: cochlear implants on children

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