Comment on Turner

COMMENT ON TURNER by Yerker Anderson Turner's points deserve serious consideration by interested scientists . Here I would like to add another point; namely, why it has been necessary for scientists in their research to put new labels on existing categories of persons with different degrees of hearing loss and on their language varieties or to create new categories, instead of adopting appropriate terms from the vocabulary ofpersons with hearing loss. The creation of new terms or categories, such as hearingimpaired ,prelingually deaf Pidgin Sign English, Deaf (capitalized ), etc., lead to disastrous results. Deaf people in most countries rejected the term hearing impaired. It was adopted probably for political and administrative purposes. The term prelingually deaf was abandoned when we discovered that deaf children born into sign language using families could not be called pre-lingual. PidginSign English was replaced with at least two new terms but now is often called contact language. Deaf Canadians have even suggested that American Sign Language should be changed to North American Sign Language! And deaf Australians had to coin a new name, Auslan, for their language to avoid confusion with ASL. The capitalized adjective Deafis virtually untranslatable in my native Swedish and many other languages because only the names of individuals, cities, and countries are capitalized. Most of the scientists who created the above listed terms had, as far as I know, never undertaken any field study ofdeaf people or interacted with "average" deaf individuals at a local club. The writings of scientists specializing in the linguistic, psychological, and sociological aspects of deaf people have too often suggested that only their own personal experiences, selected deaf informants , or influential deaf persons have supplied the information for their research. Paul Higgins is apparently the only scientist having ventured to interact with "average" deaf individuals on a regular basis at a club in a metropolitan city (Chicago) prior to publishing Outsiders in a HearingWorld. Students in my sociology courses at Gallaudet University, after reading the work and examining the @1994 Linstok Press, Inc. Note inside front cover ISSN 0302-1475 127 Andersson concepts proposed by different researchers, have repeatedly concluded that Higgins's conception of deafcommunity is more accurate than those offered by other scientists. Although Higgins and Padden both use Hillery's definition of community, their conclusions are quite different. Unlike Padden, Higgins examined the concept of deaf community in the light of his visits to a deaf club and interviews with deaf individuals in a city. At the end of his book Higgins describes his own sign language skills and interactions with deaf persons as well as his research methods, and unlike many other scientists, cautions his readers on the limitations of his generalizations. Higgins did not make any distinction between culture and community. Padden's treatment of culture and community as distinct categories may have been based on her unwillingness to exclude hearing persons from the deaf community. This possible bias was raised in my mind when I read Schuchman's reaction in Hollywood Speaks to her attempt to maintain a distinction between culture and community (1988:ix & 8). I have the impression that European researchers are more familiar with the "average" social life of deaf people than are their colleagues in the United States. As the deaf club is a center in the lives of deaf individuals in many European countries, the researchers have often had to recruit informants through the deaf club or to make their observations at the club. A brief description of the social life of deaf people in Europe and in the US may raise more questions in reconsidering Padden's concept of "deaf community." The social life of deaf adults in metropolitan centers is not necessarily similar to that in smaller cities. Based on my visits to at least two local clubs in metropolitan New York, and in Washington , DC, where Dr. Padden grew to adulthood and where I have lived for more than 30 years, I have found that deaf adults in these cities as well as in my native Stockholm can break themselves into permanent groups both within and outside the club for sharing their specialized interests. These groups may be either overlapping or exculsive. This...