What does it mean to be Deaf?

So, I am excited to be able to continue on with my blogs as my finals! I absolutely enjoy blogging, it is sort of like a therapy for me.

Anyway, I am doing a final on the deaf and its involvement with the community media. I am curious to know how much community media are focused on the deaf and how the deaf use the community media to their advantage.

First thing first, this blog is all about being deaf/Deaf so you will have a better idea of what will be blogged in the future...

Definition of Deaf:
The deaf and hard of hearing community is very diverse, differing greatly on the cause and degree of hearing loss, age at the onset, educational background, communication methods, and how they feel about their hearing loss. How a person "labels" themselves in terms of their hearing loss is personal and may reflect identification with their relationship with the deaf community or merely how their hearing loss affects their ability to communicate. In the Deaf Community the word “deaf” has different meanings. Deaf with a lowercase-d is generally understood to mean a physical loss of hearing. Capital-d Deaf is a term that is applied to those individuals who lose their hearing at a young age. These individuals grow up NOT in the hearing world, but as members of the Deaf Community. Linguistically, the Deaf are a separate community from the hearing world (Marschark 1997). The Deaf Community's primary language is American Sign Language. This distinction may seem minor, but it underlies the foundation of Deaf Culture. “The unique communication modes of deaf people and the general difficulty they find in communicating with hearing people lead to the construction of communities of interaction based on language use” (Johnson 1994). The word Deaf also speaks to the social and culture aspects of the Deaf Community.

Diversity of Membership:
The creation of Deaf Community and Culture is dependent on three factors: deafness, communication and mutual support (Woll and Ladd 2003, 153). Left to form their own communities, the Deaf created vibrant communities with a separate language, social construct and history. In their own Communities, the Deaf see themselves as different – but not as handicapped. Deafness is not a disability it is a way of life. Benice Woll and Paddy Ladd reiterate this point in their article Deaf Communities. “By sealing off those aspects of their lives that really matter to them, Deaf people have made the existence of a positive Deaf identity possible (Woll and Ladd 2003, 153).”


Culture:
The term “culture” is analogous to community, but culture relates more to the behaviors manifested by the community. People bound together around a common cause create a community, but the minute they begin to establish behaviors around their common cause, they develop a culture. In this way, culture is the learned and shared way that communities do particular things.

Deaf culture has its own history, shared values, social norms, customs and technology which are transferred from generation to generation. What few hearing people realize is that the Deaf Community and its rich culture have existed for hundreds of years (Marschark 1997).
One possible definition of U.S. Deaf culture is a social, communal, and creative force of, by, and for Deaf people based on American Sign Language (ASL). It encompasses communication, social protocol, art, entertainment, recreation (e.g., sports, travel, and Deaf clubs), and worship. It’s also an attitude, and, as such, can be a weapon of prejudice—“You’re not one of us; you don’t belong.” (For Hearing People Only Chapter 55)

Despite the mighty efforts of generations of oralists, deaf people still prefer to communicate and mingle with their own kind. That is the psychosocial basis of Deaf community. Deaf people in the United States have staunchly resisted the unstinting attempts of oralists to eradicate the use of sign language and assimilate them into the hearing mainstream (For Hearing People Only Chapter 55). The simple fact is that deaf people who attend the common residential schools for the deaf—no matter what mode of communication is forced on them in the classroom—tend to seek out other deaf people and communicate in sign language. This is true, to some extent, in other countries, but the U.S. arguably has the most sophisticated and creative—and public—Deaf culture of any.

For more information about the Deaf and its culture, I recommend going to this incredible webstie: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/soundandfury/culture/index.html.
References:

Cohen, Leah Hager. Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1994.

Condeluci, Al. Cultural Shifting: Community Leadershop and Change. Training Resource
Network, 2002. Retrieved March 28, 2008 from: http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:ER0n0m7srzkJ:www.classaccommodation.org/Community%2520and%2520Social%2520Capital.doc+Social+Capital+leads+to+community&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us

Hall, Stephanie A. "Silent Club: An Ethnographic Study of Folklore Among the Deaf." In The
Deaf Way: Perspectives from the International Conference on Deaf Culture, eds. Carol J. Erting, Robert C. Johnson, Dorothy L. Smith and Bruce D. Snider, 522-527. Washington DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1994.

Johnson, Robert E. "Sign Language and the Concept of Deafness in a Traditional Yucatec
Mayan Village." In The Deaf Way: Perspectives from the International Conference on Deaf Culture, eds. Carol J. Erting, Robert C. Johnson, Dorothy L. Smith and Bruce D. Snider, 102. Washington DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1994.

Marschark, Marc. Raising and Educating a Deaf Child. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Moore, Matthew and Linda Levitan. For Hearing People Only (3rd Reve & Ex edition). M S M
Productions Ltd, 2003.

Woll, Bencie and Paddy Ladd. "Deaf Communities." In Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies,
Language and Education, ed. Marc Marschark and Patricia Elizabeth Spencer, 151-163. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.