The Culture of American Deaf People

THE CULTURE OF AMERICAN DEAF PEOPLE Susan D. Rutherford University of California, Berkeley When the issue of accepting American Sign Language (ASL) to meet a foreign language requirement is raised, it is often followed with questions such as: Does ASL have a culture? Is there a literature? Aren't its users simply a subculture? Does it meet the intent of a humanities requirement? This is not surprising because the idea of ASL being a complete and sophisticated language is relatively new to academic literature and is just beginning to be popularly known. Further, seeing Deaf people as a cultural entity instead of as isolated people with impaired hearing challenges the greater American society's perception about Deaf people - this is the cultural matrix in which even academia finds itself. Responses from this perception are often negative toward the language and thus its people. This paper seeks to address these questions and perceptions, and hopes to provide illumination on why we can say, yes. there is an American Deaf culture; that there is much students can learn about humanity in general and themselves in particular from the study of ASL; and that it is a legitimate field of inquiry for -foreign" language study worthy of our attention and support. The Nature of Culture To begin, let us quickly review the nature of culture. As a species, homo sapiensis particularly dependent at birth and continues this dependent status for a prolonged period of time. We cannot feed ourselves, we are not mobile, and we have very little idea or understanding of the world that we have just entered. To survive we need to be fed, sheltered, and educated. The mechanism that provides this and thus ensures the survival C 1988 by Linstok Press, Inc. 129 ISSN 0302-1475 see note inside front cover The Culture of American Deaf People of the species is culture. Culture is transmitted and learned through language. Language is learned within the context of culture - thus, language and culture are inextricably bound. It is culture that has kept us at the top of the phylogenetic scale despite our helpless and rather pathetic status at birth relative to others of the animal world. It is our facility with language that makes us uniquely human. Culture is a design for living (Geertz, 1973). It consists of whatever one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members (Goodenough, 1970). It tells a people what their needs are and how to go about meeting those needs. It is the shared experience, knowledge, and values of the group. There is a wide variety and variance in cultural knowledge and behaviors across humankind. Despite this appearance of dissimilarity among the societies of the world, however, all cultures share two primary objectives. One is the successful adaptation and survival of the group in its specific environment; the other is the maintenance of the group's identity and unity through time. That there are so many different kinds of environments to adapt to accounts in large measure for the amount of diversity we see in the cultures of the world. For example, the adaptation to climate by the Eskimo in the North American Arctic is quite different from the adaptation to climate by the Yanamamo of tropical Brazil. The climate and available resources determine the food, shelter, and clothing of each group. Where resources are marginal culture instills behaviors and traditions that ensure the survival of the group, whether it is survival in an African desert or Nordic tundra. Culture passes on the knowledge to the Kung! Bushmen ofthe Kalahari of which roots contain water during the dry season and to the Arctic Skolt Lapps of how to raise and herd reindeer. SLS 59 Summer 1988 These examples of culture working as an adaptive mechanism to the environment have focused on illustrations that are easy to understand and have been widely studied. Because these are the sorts of examples often used, we tend to think that culture only belongs to semi-clad natives appearing in the pages of NationalGeographic.Americans tend not to conceive of culture as an adaptive mechanism in our own industrialized society. Perhaps contributing to...