History of Deaf Culture

In the hopes that my American Sign Language Level 3 class makes next week (though it doesn’t look good), today’s lesson is my promised history of Deaf Culture.

I am 1/8 Choctaw Indian, so when I learned the history of how the U.S. government treated Native Americans, I was horrified and personally offended.  I had the same reaction when I read the history of Deaf Culture.

The Deaf have had a long struggle to get even basic civil rights.  Aristotle and other ancient philosophers believed that learning was only possible for people who could hear spoken words, and so for almost 2,000 years, deaf people did not have any legal rights.  They couldn’t own property or get married, and were labeled as “non-persons.”  

It wasn’t until the Renaissance, in the 1500s, that European scholars and monks began teaching written words, speech, lip reading, and manual handshapes to deaf students.  Standardized sign language soon began to spread through deaf schools in France.

While Old French Sign Language was gaining popularity, another method called Oralism also starting making progress with deaf students.  Oralism, or the Oral Method, teaches only speech and lipreading instead of sign.  At the 1880 International Congress on the Education of the Deaf in Milan, a resolution was declared affirming

“the incontestable superiority of speech over sign for integrating the deaf-mute into society and for giving him better command of the language.”

Oralism swept through the deaf schools in America and Europe, and in most schools Sign Language was forbidden as it was deemed by Oralists to be “primitive” and its users “abnormal.”  Students caught signing were often punished, some even having their hands tied behind their backs to prevent them from communicating in their natural, primary language.  In the U.S., the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) was created, which argued that 

“oral communication alone was inadequate for many deaf people."

The NAD deserves much of the credit for keeping Sign Language education alive. 

Finally, in 1960, American Sign Language was declared a legitimate language of its own.  A Hearing professor at Gallaudet University (the only liberal arts university for the Deaf in the world) proved that ASL is a “unique language, separate and distinct from English,” with its own grammar and syntax.  Then in 1964, Congress issued a report that declared Oral education to be a “dismal failure,” indirectly saying that Sign Language is the superior method for educating deaf children.

Deaf culture (that’s Deaf with a “big D”) involves the shared beliefs and values of the Deaf community, namely the use of American Sign Language as their primary language.  Most Deaf people do not consider their lack of hearing to be a disability that needs to be fixed.  Instead, they view themselves as a “linguistic minority,” since they are bonded together through communicating in ASL.

The most hotly-contested issue in the Deaf-World is Cochlear Implants, which many Deaf people view as threatening their culture’s very existence and continuation.  This issue is debated in the heart-wrenching documentary Sound and Fury, which we will explore further in an upcoming post.

To be clear, Brandt is NOT culturally Deaf and in all likelihood will never choose to become so (though our local Deaf community has been very welcoming to us and other ASL students and Hard-of-Hearing people).  When he becomes fully, biologically deaf, he plans to receive Cochlear Implants and remain in the Hearing world, continuing to call himself “Hearing-Impaired”—although we will use signs to help with our communication and to converse with Deaf friends and acquaintances.

For a brief history of Deaf Culture and several forms of Sign Language, as well as an introduction to American Sign Language (with 1,400 photographs), I highly recommend the book Talking With Your Hands, Listening With Your Eyes.  This was my first book on ASL and I still refer to it often.

And for a more in-depth exploration of Deaf Culture, check out Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture and A Journey Into the Deaf-World.