A Lens on Deaf Identities

Abstract

Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals develop their identities within environments that convey and reinforce preconceived assumptions of what it means to hear or see the world differently. These assumptions ultimately influence identity evolution and psychological well-being. A Lens on Deaf Identities explores multiple factors, both past and present, with significance for deaf/hard-of-hearing identities. These factors include explanatory paradigms of how deaf and hard-of-hearing people are understood within the context of disability and sociolinguistics; the formal recognition of a Deaf culture and the emergence of bicultural frames of reference; the appearance of deaf identity theories in the psychological literature; the influence of families and schools, and historical and social contexts; the acknowledgment of diversity in this population; and the technology that affects the identity of deaf people in different ways (e.g., cochlear implants as bionic ears, telecommunications that bring deaf people together with each other as well as with hearing people, and advances in genetics that counter the acceptability of hearing differences). Personal experiences, theoretical formulations, and research data are used to examine interfaces within and between each of these areas and how the tensions emerging at these junctures influence deaf and hard-of-hearing identity formation in complex, multifaceted ways that defy pervasive stereotypes of deaf and hard-of-hearing persons. This book will appeal to readers interested in d/Deaf/hard-of-hearing lives, Deaf studies and deaf education, and those interested in identity formation in the presence of “disability”.

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