The Social Condition of Deaf People: The Story of a Woman and a Hearing Society (Sign Languages and Deaf Communities, 16)

This book is about the social condition of Deaf people, told through a Deaf woman’s autobiography and a series of essays investigating how hearing societies relate to Deaf people. Michel Foucault described the powerful one as the beholder who is not seen. This is why a Deaf woman’s perspective is important: Minorities that we don’t even suspect we have power over observe us in turn. Majorities exert power over minorities by influencing the environment and institutions that simplify or hinder lives: language, mindsets, representations, norms, the use of professional power. Based on data collected by Eurostat, this volume provides the first discussion of statistics on the condition of Deaf people in a series of European countries, concerning education, labor, gender. This creates a new opportunity to discuss inequalities on the basis of data. The case studies in this volume reconstruct untold moments of great advancement in Deaf history, successful didactics supporting bilingualism, the reasons why Deaf empowerment for and by Deaf people does and does not succeed. A work of empowerment is effective if it acts on a double level: the community to be empowered and society at large, resulting in a transformation of society as a whole. This book provides instruments to work towards such a transformation. This book is about the social condition of Deaf people, told through a Deaf woman’s autobiography and a series of essays investigating how hearing societies relate to Deaf people.
Michel Foucault described the powerful one as the beholder who is not seen. This is why a Deaf woman’s perspective is important: Minorities that we don’t even suspect we have power over observe us in turn. Majorities exert power over minorities by influencing the environment and institutions that simplify or hinder lives: language, mindsets, representations, norms, the use of professional power.
Based on data collected by Eurostat, this volume provides the first discussion of statistics on the condition of Deaf people in a series of European countries, concerning education, labor, gender. This creates a new opportunity to discuss inequalities on the basis of data. The case studies in this volume reconstruct untold moments of great advancement in Deaf history, successful didactics supporting bilingualism, the reasons why Deaf empowerment for and by Deaf people does and does not succeed. A work of empowerment is effective if it acts on a double level: the community to be empowered and society at large, resulting in a transformation of society as a whole. This book provides instruments to work towards such a transformation. Over the past decades, the field of sign language linguistics has expanded considerably. Recent research on sign languages includes a wide range of subdomains such as reference grammars, theoretical linguistics, psycho- and neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics, and applied studies on sign languages and Deaf communities. The SLDC series is concerned with the study of sign languages in a comprehensive way, covering various theoretical, experimental, and applied dimensions of sign language research and their relationship to Deaf communities around the world. The series provides a multidisciplinary