Deaf culture

Deaf community and Deaf culture are two phrases used to refer to persons who are culturally Deaf as opposed to those who are deaf from the medical/audiological/pathological perspective. When used in the cultural sense, the word deaf is very often capitalized. Being unable to hear is only a part of being Deaf. In fact, when the word is used in the cultural sense, hearing is one of the least important criteria used to delineate membership within the group. Many persons that would be labeled as hearing or hard-of-hearing from the audiological/medical/pathological perspective would be labeled, or would label themselves Deaf from the cultural one. Similarly, a person who identifies themselves as Deaf may in fact have much more hearing than one who identified themselves as hearing or hard-of-hearing. The use of the cultural label is a question of personal identity much more than a question of hearing ability.

Culturally deaf people (sometimes called the capital "D" deaf) do not look on deafness as a disability. They consider deafness a positive trait, because it is tightly connected to other aspects of Deaf culture which they experience as positive. Deaf unity and community is strong. The fact that deafness excludes people from some aspects of hearing culture reinforces cohesion within the community. As an example of how thouroughly deafness is seen as a positive attribute, many Deaf individuals wish for their children to be born deaf. This can be hard or even impossible for hearing people to understand. Hearing people who treat deafness as a disability or subscribe to a pathological perspective of deafness are sometimes met with hostility by those in the Deaf community. Although hearing people can and do participate in and belong to the Deaf community, their different life experiences tend to set them apart.

Table of contents

1 Is the Deaf community a real culture?
2 Group Attributes
3 Deaf Art
4 Deaf Literature
5 Deaf Humor
6 Mainstream recognition of Deaf culture

Is the Deaf community a real culture?

Sociologists, who are the ones we charge with settling such questions, have a list of properties that a group of people must possess in order to be considered a culture. For example, a prison population would not be considered a culture in the sociological sense because the people interred are not there of their own free will. The Deaf community has all of the attributes a group of people need: a shared language, attitudes and beliefs in common, literature, art, volunteer associations, a tendency to marry within the group, etc., in order to be considered a true culture.Therefore, it is not an instance of grandiosity or even a slight exaggeration to use the phrase Deaf culture.

Group Attributes

As with any other culture, there exist a set of shared experiences, attitudes and cultural norms that serve to identify and bring together members of the community while simultaneously serving to exclude outsiders from entering the core group. To be fully included in the Deaf community, one must at least have the following attributes and possibly others not mentioned.

Fluency in sign language and a positive attitudes toward the language. Sign language is the central feature of Deafness and having a shared language sets up a powerful affinity for the Deaf as well as for the hearing cultures. Language is often a central, indeed required, component of a culture for any group of people. In hearing cultures a similar expectation is made of foreigners who are expected to learn the language of the land they have emigrated to if they expect to successfully assimilate into the culture.
Knowledge and respect of the cultural norms of the Deaf community. For example, the Deaf community has attention-getting behaviors, rules for eye contact, norms for introductions and leave-taking, humor, and many other cultural norms which are very different from those of the hearing culture it is embedded within.
Adaptations to deafness. Depending primarily on one's eyes instead of ears for interaction with the surrounding world radically alters one's perspective and expectations about functioning in the world. Even hearing persons who are members of the Deaf community are expected to know about and even exhibit some of the adaptations deafness induces in an individual.

For much of history deaf people were largely expected to adapt to hearing culture as best they were able or to be hidden or invisible. Recently, especially in the United States, the recognition of a Deaf culture has been increasingly recognized. A watershed point in the appreciation of a long-standing and important Deaf culture by the dominant hearing culture was the series of student strikes at Gallaudet University starting March 9, 1988. The Deaf students at the university were outraged at the selection of another in a long line of university presidents who were hearing and who had little experience or competence with Deaf culture. They claimed selecting such an individual when there were deaf applicants who were better qualified was patronizing, marginalizing, and inappropriate for such an essential office in the Deaf community. After less than a week of activism, the president-elect, who had also been criticized for malapropos statements about the functionality of deaf people, resigned and a deaf president replaced her.