Many Ways to Be Deaf: International Variation in Deaf Communities

8. School Language and Shifts in Irish Deaf Identity

8 School Language and Shifts in Irish Deaf Identity Barbara LeMaster What it means to be Deaf in the Republic of Ireland has been changing over the years (LeMaster 1990; Matthews 1996; Burns 1998). Similarly, what the term Irish Sign Language (ISL) refers to has also been changing (LeMaster 2002b). The sociolinguistic expression of Deafness in Ireland is completely embedded in a particularly Irish way of life. To understand both pathological “deaf” and sociocultural “Deaf” identities (or simultaneous “d/Deaf” identities) of people living in Dublin , one needs to consider the historical role of residential school language policies and various d/Deaf social movements within Ireland over time.1 THEORY, METHODS, AND THE RESEARCHER’S ROLE IN THE COMMUNITY As an American conducting research in Ireland, I began my work through the lens of American understandings of d/Deaf group formation. What I found was a rhetoric of Deafness that was expressed in ways familiar to the U.S. situation yet was conveyed through unfamiliar linguistic means. For a number of years, the United States has been fond of describing a Deaf community that uses sign varieties in hegemonic, dichotomous, diglossic (Ferguson 1959) ways, a community in which English varieties of signing are used with outsiders and American Sign Language (ASL) is used among in-group members (Stokoe 1969–1970; Markowicz and Woodward 1978; Padden 1980). Many early researchers linked the primacy of language use to deaf/Deaf group formation and cohesion in the United States (Stokoe 1960; Jacobs 1972; Woodward 1972; Padden and Markowicz 1975; Padden 1980; LeMaster 1983; Padden and Humphries 1988). This body of research uncovered how ASL often serves as a signal of Deaf culture membership, exclusion of outsiders, or both. Those who could not use ASL would have trouble claiming a Deaf identity and being accepted as a member by other Deaf culture members. Although the American situation has often been presented in dichotomous ways as though the concept “d/Deaf versus hearing” people represents real and clearly bounded groups, the situation is actually much more complex as more recent scholarship suggests (Aramburo 1989; Lucas 1989; 153 154 Barbara LeMaster Lucas and Valli 1992; De Garcia 1995; Ramsey 1997; Metzger 2000; Lucas, Bayley, and Valli 2001; see also Woodward 1976; Shroyer and Shroyer 1984). The appropriate use of ASL plays a vital role in the expression of American Deaf identity nonetheless. Considering the great complexity among American Deaf people’s signing, one realizes that the notion of a “Deaf community” is in many ways an imagined reality (Anderson 1983) as Nakamura points out in chapter 11 of this volume, and this imagined reality is always culturally situated.2 When I began my research in Dublin in the 1980s, deaf people talked about themselves in terms similar to those used within the U.S. Deaf communities. Although the term Deaf culture was not as prevalent in community rhetoric during the early days of my research, the dichotomous view that distinguished “real Deaf” people (alluding to a cultural attribute) from people who are “just deaf” (in the pathological sense) still influenced how Deaf people talked about one another . This idea of legitimate Deaf status was tied to perceptions of skill in ISL (LeMaster 1998). However, although the rhetoric used in Ireland seemed to mirror the dichotomous American view that ASL (or in this case, ISL) was linked to Deaf identity and that the use of signed versions of English was linked with outsiders, the language practices of the Irish did not seem to match their rhetoric in two ways. First, English-based signing with mouthing was often used during discussions about political Deafness (whether the addressees were deaf or hearing). Second, generation and gender were prominent factors in language and identity negotiations among the Irish more so than distinctions between Deaf and hearing (LeMaster 1990; McDonnell and Saunders 1993; Matthews 1996; Burns 1998; Ó Baoill and Matthews 2000; LeMaster 2002b). The community’s more senior members signed without lip movements and would be more likely to use ISL with hearing people. In contrast, during the 1980s, the younger members of the community often spoke or, at least, used English lip movements with their signing and were more likely to use Englishin fluenced signing with hearing people. Yet, the younger Irish Deaf people were the ones who talked about how they were more culturally Deaf and used more ISL than the older people. Each group would say that the other group did not use ISL or did...