American Sign Language and Early Literacy: A Model Parent-Child Program

6. A Deaf Cultural Space

66 6 A Deaf Cultural Space To argue that our program environment and activities provided a Deaf cultural presence, it must be clear what Deaf culture is and how it was manifest in this setting. Carol Padden and Tom Humphries note that they have “used a definition of culture that focused on beliefs and practices, particularly the central role of sign language in the everyday lives of the community” (2005, p. 1). These authors make reference to the view of Deaf people as “seeing people” or “people of the eye,” but add that “Deaf people’s practices of ‘seeing’ are not necessarily natural or logical,” as in terms of possessing “a heightened visual sense” (2005, p. 2). Rather, these “ways of ‘seeing’ follow from a long history of interacting with the world in certain ways—in cultural ways” (p. 2). Deaf schools, communities, employment, poetry, and theater, as well as signed languages, form part of this history. Padden and Humphries’s focus on beliefs and practices reveals how an ASL and Deaf culture discourse is based on more than simply language. Like other discourses, Deaf culture involves, as well as particular uses of language, “distinctive ways of acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, believing, with other people and with various objects, tools, and technologies, so as to enact specific socially recognizable identities engaged in specific socially recognizable activities” (Gee, 2008, p. 155). A particular ASL discourse is tied to a particular social identity of being “culturally Deaf” and to particular settings and institutions like Deaf schools and Deaf clubs. Each discourse also invites its apprentices to play a particular role, but by participating in discourses individuals can also act to alter them in some way. A Deaf Cultural Space 67 For instance, the increased participation of former mainstreamed Deaf students in present-day ASL and Deaf culture discourses has broadened the definitions of who counts as Deaf and who can play a role in these discourses. We can glimpse these Deaf culture–based beliefs and practices , and this history of interacting with the world, in the theme of name signs in our program and in the distinct nature of the knowledge the Deaf participants in my study shared in regard to the features and uses of ASL and to ASL literacy practices. The unique features of this knowledge derive from its origins in a community of Deaf people for whom ASL is a first or primary language, who have grown up knowing the importance of visual communication for Deaf children, and whose professional experience has further developed this expertise with fostering early ASL literacy. This knowledge is largely absent from the discourse of Ontario speech and hearing and medical professionals as presented in this book, due in large part to the lack of resources for supporting ASL. Several writers have chronicled the impact of 20th-century oralist discourses of mainstreaming and medical interventions, and of Deaf community counterdiscourses regarding Deaf people ’s ways of seeing (Ladd, 2003; Padden & Humphries, 2005). In particular, the recognition of signed language–using Deaf individuals as members of genuine linguistic communities and the advances in overall linguistic knowledge that have been gained by discoveries in signed language linguistics have greatly contributed to the recognition of Deaf culture and heritage. As Padden and Humphries note, “To possess a language that is not quite like other languages, yet equal to them, is a powerful realization for a group of people who have long felt their language disrespected and besieged by others’ attempts to eliminate it” (2005, p. 157). However, Ladd expresses the difficulties inherent in validating cultural recognition of the Deaf community, particularly in an academic domain in which Deaf people’s experiences have 68 Chapter 6 been virtually excluded. As he argues, “Initially, in order to even establish the existence of a Deaf community, one has to work one’s way through a series of ideological strata which attempt to deny its existence” (2003, p. 169). After overcoming these ideologies , researchers must contend with a dominant-culture view of the Deaf community “as a collection of individuals who are either less than normal or who have failed to achieve normality” (p. 169). Only after researchers “begin to attempt an honest academic description of a healthy Deaf community in its own terms” can the concept of Deaf culture be presented for consideration (pp.169–171). These difficulties are so pervasive because of the dominance of...