The Importance Of Deaf Culture And Community

As a hearing individual who had no interaction with the Deaf community prior to enrolling in American Sign Language courses at the University of Pittsburgh, I previously had essentially no knowledge or understanding of Deaf culture. Gradually, I have increased my knowledge and awareness of Deaf culture and the Deaf community, but I have much more to learn because but there are always questions about Deaf culture and community that I still do not know the answer to. For Hearing People Only by Matthew S. Moore and Linda Levitan is an incredibly insightful book and answered many interesting questions about the Deaf culture and community and helped me to continue my education about Deaf culture. In chapter nine, the authors address the differences …show more content…
I thought that this discussion was very interesting because the authors argued that the term “hearing” often implies a higher status (cite source). While I agree that the word “Deaf” unfortunately often has negative connotation in most hearing societies, I had never previously considered the implied status of the term “hearing.” The authors argued that instead of viewing people as either hearing or non-hearing, they viewed people as being either Deaf of non-deaf (Source). However, they argued that the title “For Non-Deaf People Only” would simply not sell, as it would deter hearing people. I was really intrigued by this because there has been great discussion of using labels in my ASL classes, however, the discussion has been centered around what Deaf people have been called, are called, and how they like to be referred to. We did not, however, examine the labels used to define a person who has the physical ability to hear. As a hearing individual who has never felt the oppression that a Deaf person may feel in reference to labels used by society, I have never previously been conscious to how there is clearly a bias and double standard even in the vocabulary used to define people who have the ability to