There has been an interesting situation at Gallaudet University, which is for the hearing impaired. They appointed a new president, who apparently wasn't "deaf enough" for the university, and there were so many protests that the appointment was rescinded. Here is an editorial from the Chicago Tribune about the situation.

In that article there was a comment that confused me. They said:

"Underlying the protests is a widely studied and widely disputed set of customs, values and beliefs known as deaf culture. It unites a worldwide subcommunity of the deaf in the way other cultures are united by a shared history, values and language. In this case, the language is sign language. The usage, inflections, grammar and 'accents' of one's signing can have special significance in deaf culture that is difficult for the hearing to comprehend."

While I can understand "usage" and "grammar" in sign language, it is hard for me to see how there can be "inflections" and "accents." I can only envision inflections and accents being associated with spoken language. What am I missing?

While I can understand "usage" and "grammar" in sign language, it is hard for me to see how there can be "inflections" and "accents." I can only envision inflections and accents being associated with spoken language. What am I missing?

There are different dialects of ASL (American sign language). and that probably what constitutes accents. As for inflections, gestures can be varied by being drawn out or quick and choppy, and that probably accounts for inflections. I've spoken with a few deaf kids and their signer/interpreters about how different areas of the country have slightly and greatly different signs and ways of signing. (I worked in a computer lab at a local high school.)

The reason the woman wasn't considered "deaf" enough is that she wasn't a "native speaker" of ASL. She lost her hearing at some point, and learned ASL after childhood, thus acquiring an "accent". The people of California didn't seem to have a problem with the Gubernator.

This "not deaf enough" business just makes absolutely no sense to me at all. You don't hear blind people saying of visually impaired people that they are "not blind enough." When someone is born or becomes disabled, the person, his family and the healthcare community all generally band together to help the person to adapt to the loss and get along in the world as normally as possible in spite of it. However, in the case of "deaf culture," it seems that those with the loss want the rest of the world to go away and leave them alone while they create their own world. I've even seen articles about the huge controversy in the deaf community regarding the cochlear ear implant, which can help to restore some hearing in deaf people. The hard-core deaf community sees the cochlear implant as a betrayal of its culture! So reading lips as opposed to reading ASL is "not deaf enough;" cochlear implants and hearing aids are "not deaf enough." Speaking instead of signing is "not deaf enough."

It seems the radical segment of the deaf population do themselves a disservice when they limit their own access to methods and approaches that could help them. This would be comparable to saying that everybody who is nearsighted ought to be able to drive without glasses, because that is their native state.

As one who sees "with a different accent" from those with 20-20 vision, I am totally befuddled by the entire controversy.

Wordmatic

I can understand some of the extremism in the deaf community, even though I don't agree with it. For decades deaf children were put in schools that emphasized lip-reading and banned sign language. Lip-reading is a hit-and-miss skill at best, and the consequence of banning sign language was that these kids got little exposure to any language at all during the critical period of language development and ended up with the diminished language skills of profoundly neglected children. I can understand why they might be a tad oversensitive on this point.

With respect to "deaf culture", a lot of deafness is inherited and runs in families, so there is a cultural aspect to it. Stories of the deaf schools have been passed on from generation to generation.

I didn't know that sign language was banned for them, neveu. I thought the radical deaf community was taking its cues from the Black Pride and Gay Pride movements, or something. When I was in elementary school, the third floor of our building was devoted to classes for deaf children from all over the city, whereas the rest of the school was for neighborhood children, grades K-6. There was no attempt to integrate the two groups or to mainstream any of the deaf children who might have been able to handle a regular classroom environment and there was definitely tension between the two groups.I can remember some of the kids with hearing (for non-blind you would say "sighted;" for non-deaf would you say "hearinged?" "audioed" "working-eared?") kids making fun of the deaf kids, and I know that I was afraid of them, because they were often hostile if you bumped into them and their verbalizations sounded strange.

Obviously depriving them of sign language was a form of discrimination. I say, any aid to communication--sign language, lip reading, signers, typing on computers, writing on sheets of paper, cochlear implants, hearing aids. For the radical deaf to discriminate against other hearing impaired because of the methods they use to communicate seems equally discriminatory. One would hope that this irrational swing of the pendulum will pass sooner rather than later.

Nowadays, parents of children with normal hearing teach them to sign before they can talk, as a way of communicating their needs. My nephew and his wife are doing that.
WM

Another thing the deaf kids in the high school computer lab and their interpreters were upset about, was that the schools taught Signed Exact English to deaf kids rather than American Sign Language. The former is a way to sign English, the latter is a different language from English. This is also a big controversy in the US Deaf Community.

quote:

Originally posted by wordmatic:
This "not deaf enough" business just makes absolutely no sense to me at all. You don't hear blind people saying of visually impaired people that they are "not blind enough." ... As one who sees "with a different accent" from those with 20-20 vision, I am totally befuddled by the entire controversy.

This is a poor comparison, at best. There is a definite linguistic difference between those who grow up learning a language and those who pick it up later in life. Visual impairment does not(that I know of) effect language development.

quote:

As one who sees "with a different accent" from those with 20-20 vision

This comparison doesn't make any sense. Certainly you can't see as well as those with perfect vision, any better than you can hear than those with perfect hearing. Almost no one has perfect vision, or perfect hearing, but those who grow up with poor vision don't have any problems with language, and nothing approaching an "accent". People who grow up with poor hearing are probably more likely to have language impairment.

quote:

Underlying the protests is a widely studied and widely disputed set of customs, values and beliefs known as deaf culture. It unites a worldwide subcommunity of the deaf in the way other cultures are united by a shared history, values and language. In this case, the language is sign language.

This quote from the original article is misleading. The worldwide community may be united by sign language, but it doesn't speak a sign language. American Sign Language is entirely different from sign language in used in other countries.

I saw a movie a few years ago that, I believe, was called, In the Land of the Deaf. A deaf, pregnant woman in that film gave birth to a hearing baby. Her husband, who was also deaf, said something like, "I wish she was deaf; but we love her anyway." I highly recommend you pop down to your local library and check it out.

A deaf couple, Carol Padden and Tom Humphries, wrote two books about Deaf culture, Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture in 1998, and Inside Deaf Culture in 2005. Here is the transcript of an interview with the authors by NPR in 2005. I haven't read those books, yet, but I plan to.

Tinman

quote:

This is a poor comparison, at best. There is a definite linguistic difference between those who grow up learning a language and those who pick it up later in life. Visual impairment does not(that I know of) effect language development.

Seanahan, I was not saying that visual impairment affects development of spoken language, although certainly blindness from birth would interfere with the ability of a child to learn to read until he or she could be taught Braille, something that takes special instruction. I was comparing one kind of sensory loss to another. I am legally blind in one eye, something that happened to me at the age of 54. When I speak of "seeing with a different accent," I am speaking figuratively. My concern was that when I hear about members of the deaf community coming down on people who are only partially deaf because they choose to use hearing aids or try for some sort of ear surgery to recover their hearing, I feel pretty appalled that anybody would get on anybody else's case for trying to find the workable accommodation of their choice.

Now that I've read the NPR transcript (thanks, Tinman) I am glad to see that Deaf Culture is not at all about closing doors, but that instead, there is openness to the "many ways of being deaf," along with lots of controversy within that community and, justifiably, a lot of fear that sign language might be taken away from them again. It was good to read that these leaders of the deaf community are thrilled that hearing parents are using sign language with their hearing children as a way of enhancing speech development and reading. Sounds as if the entire world of dealing with deafness is in the midst of a huge transition, as is the rest of the world, because of new doors being opened to everyone through technology.

Wordmatic

This message has been edited. Last edited by: wordmatic,

Correlates with a reputedly successful swimming coach decades ago, who couldn't swim

Surely blindness (and percents of it) affect communication, besides just with reading and writing. Nonverbal communication is a big part of connecting with people.

Have you ever thought which you'd rather be, blind or deaf? I have, and while I realize I'd feel isolated either way, I think I'd rather be deaf.

While I, too, am glad to see that the Deaf Culture isn't all about closing doors, I find it selfish that there are those in that culture who want to prevent deaf people from hearing with cochlear implants, and the like. In this day and age, I really don't understand it.

Thanks, zmj, for the description of "inflections" and "accents" in sign language. That makes sense.