Cultural Aspects of Being Deaf

In any given country, there is a dominant and prevailing culture that tends to be more pervasive than others. However, there are also cultures that are counter or parallel to the dominant culture. One of those common subcultures is that of deaf people. Even with the fact that deaf and hearing-impaired people live in the same dominant cultures as everyone else, they have to exist and act in a different way because they cannot hear well, if at all. As such, it is important to assess and review deaf culture and how it is different than other cultures, how it is the same as other cultures and what cultural cues and trends are near and dear to people with no or little hearing.

Even though deaf culture has surely existed on some level for all of human existence, it did not come into its own as a definitive culture until 1965. That is only a little over half a century ago so not a lot has time has passed since then, especially in comparison to the length of human history. The comparison is even interesting when looking at American history, which has not reached 2.5 centuries yet. As one might expect, deaf culture is very much about the language that is unique to dear people, that being sigh language. Even that took some time to entrench as part of culture, deaf or otherwise, and did not truly happen until the Dictionary of American Sign Language was published (Start ASL).

The facets of deaf culture are numerous. Some are basic and abstract while others are more tangible and real. Those aspects of deaf culture including language, speech, socializing, literature, norms and rules for behavior, and so forth. The rules for behavior in particular is very precise and specific because every little part of communication is focused on and part of what people pay so much attention to. There are rules and guidelines when it comes to the use of eyes, facial expressions, introductions, labels and so forth. The cultural items seen in literature and movies are also important to focus on. Good books that exist that relate to deaf culture include Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language, Inside Deaf Culture, A Deaf Adult Speaks Out, and Deaf in America, just to name a few. A number of deaf people have been able to find their way to the silver screen including Linda Bove from Sesame Street, Marlee Matlin from Children of a Lesser God (which one her an Academy Award), Deanne Bray from Sue Thomas: FB Eye and Shoshannah Stern from a number of prominent and ongoing television shows. The last of those is the only one of her kind up until the recent past (Start ASL). As would be needed and necessary, there are also universities around the United States and wider world that cater a part of their efforts to accommodating and assisting the deaf. One such university, and one that has very large and prominent efforts, is Gallaudet University. They have efforts and systems to the extent that they have an entire National Deaf Education Center as part of their university. The values and behaviors that they espouse include promoting an environment that promotes the deaf people's vision and culture, the valuing of children who are deaf, the support for bilingual ASL/English education, the inclusion of certain rules of behavior when both communication styles are needed and so forth (Gallaudet)