Deaf Culture and Deaf Language Acquisition



Deaf Culture and Deaf Language Acquisition

Abstract

The following paper has been written upon the topic of Deaf Culture and Deaf Language Acquisition. It begins with an introduction about the topic of deaf Culture, it further moves to signify the importance of acquisition of Deaf Language. The paper further moves into discussion and reviews scholarly articles, research papers and journal articles of authors who have worked for the Deaf culture and have correlated the work of Language Acquisition for deaf. In the discussion phase the paper first suggests the key points of the paper and then my critical analysis upon the paper is mentioned. In the conclusion phase the work of all the researchers is compared and then I give may personnel overview about the proposed solutions by the researchers.

Introduction

Deaf Culture describes the social beliefs, art, history, traditions values, behavior and shared institutions of communities that are affected by the problem of deafness and who use sign languages as the primary mode of communication. The people associated with Deaf Community believe that deafness is a different human experience, and it should not be accounted as a disability.

Deaf people are united as a community to acquire deaf culture and according to this culture they do acquire command upon Deaf language. Deafness can be genetic since birth, or in some cases a person can acquire as he grows older. Communities and schools made for deaf people help them to acquire sign language, which helps them, communicate with their parents and other people.

Discussion

After reviewing a total of eight studies, which all were compiled with important data it became apparent the impact that culture has on language acquisition for the deaf. Culture and language for the deaf go hand in hand. In the study of Grosjean, F. (1992), “The bilingual & the bicultural person in the hearing and in the deaf world perspective”. The author makes notes of the importance of the image of the deaf of themselves.

This literature review is conducted on those who had ASL yet, did not have a perception of being disabled. Instead, they had a self- assurance of whom they were and what their culture expected of them which had a great impact not only on their self-esteem but also on their ability to excel in language acquisition.

“The dominant construction of deaf people as disabled centers solely around their audio logical position, which is measured in relation to the hearing majority. This is a negative construction that stubbornly refuses to engage with the construction from deaf people themselves who focus not on the level of hearing but on the value in the language, culture, and collective identity that they acquire as a result” (Ladd, 2003). Many past studies were presented in this article that had focused on disability, disabled identity, deaf and disabled education, and risks to deaf children from the depiction of disability.

Chijoke Obasi makes notation, accepts and recognizes the deaf culture. He notes that there is a variation within the deaf ...