Deaf Studies Terms
Words and phrases used in Deaf Studies, the Deaf world.
Oral Education (N)
Oral education, or oralism, focused on teaching deaf children to communicate through speech and lipreading. Sign language was discouraged or actively forbidden.
A Dutch historical video (date unknown) of teaching speech to young deaf children (click on the picture to see the video):
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oralism#:~:text=Oralism%20is%20the%20education%20of,States%20around%20the%20late%201860s.Ownership (N)
Ownership is very important for museums. Who owns the artefacts? Who tells the stories?
A very simplified, very short summary of what's involved:
In the past, explorers travelled to new worlds (new for them), by boat, on foot, or carried by horses, camels, elephants or humans.
The explorers saw many wonderful things there and took some of them home to show them to the people in their own country, in museums and zoos. 'Things' included objects, art, animals, even people. 'Taking' included: receiving as gifts, buying, or stealing.
The stories that the museums told about these 'things' were told from the perspective of the explorers. Dates and locations may have been correct, but many of the stories were not. Slowly, museums changed and added more information. They started to consult the previous 'owners', the people who had made these objects, used them, knew their histories.
Then, two things happened. The previous owners wanted their objects back, to put them on display in their own museums for their own people. And they wanted to tell their own stories, from their perspective. Not as consultants, but as the rightful owners and experts.
Developments that are still ongoing, that have many more sides and and no 'one size fits all' solution.
The same things have been happening, are happening, with respect to the Deaf community. In the past, their history was told by hearing people, from the hearing perspective. Then, Deaf people became involved as consultants. Now some Deaf people want their objects, stories, histories returned to the Deaf community, because Deaf people are the rightful owners and experts.
Again, there is no 'one size fits all' solution.
In theory, on paper, the best solution of course is for Deaf and hearing experts to work together, to teach each other, to learn from each other, to acknowledge and benefit from each others expertise. In the real world, unfortunately, things may be more complicated.
Further reading: https://www.museumnext.com/article/what-does-it-mean-to-decolonize-a-museum/
Sign Languages (N)
Sign languages, plural, because every country has its own sign language, and some countries have more than one, for example Belgium with Flemish (VGT) and French Belgian Sign Language (LSFB) , and Spain with Spanish (LSE) and Catalan Sign Language (LSC).
Sign languages are natural languages each with its own lexicon and grammar. Sign languages have in common that they use the hands, face and body as 'articulators'.
Sign language is NOT :
-
- universal. There are between 138 and 300 different sign languages being used around the world.
- a word-by-word translation of a spoken language. In education, teachers sometimes speak and sign at the same time to teach children the spoken language in a visual way. To transmit the exact surface structure of a spoken sentence (instead of its meaning) - for example to sign articles, function words and affixes and suffixes - artificial and usually cumbersome signs have been invented. This is not sign language, but an artificial, and for sign language users unnatural code, usually called 'signed English', 'signed French', etc.
- a letter-by-letter spelling of words with the hands. Letter-by-letter spelling is called fingerspelling and is used for instance for names.
Social Model of Disability
"Where the pathology paradigm asks questions such as “what is wrong with the individual?”, the social model of disability asks questions such as “what are the barriers to accessibility and inclusion?”
(..)
The social model seeks to uncover and change how institutions and cultural norms disable individuals due to lack of understanding, acceptance, and accommodation."
Text and illustration by Jillian Enright: The Social Model of Disability, 2021
Words to use and avoid
Source: Inclusive language: words to use and avoid when writing about disability, 15 March 2021
Consider these guidelines when communicating with or about disabled people:
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- The word ‘disabled’ is a description not a group of people. Use ‘disabled people’ not ‘the disabled’ as the collective term.
- However, many deaf people whose first language is BSL consider themselves part of ‘the deaf community’ – they may describe themselves as ‘Deaf’, with a capital D, to emphasise their deaf identity.
(..)
Words to use and avoid
Avoid passive, victim words. Use language that respects disabled people as active individuals with control over their own lives.
| Avoid | Use |
|---|---|
| (the) handicapped, (the) disabled | disabled (people) |
| afflicted by, suffers from, victim of | has [name of condition or impairment] |
| confined to a wheelchair, wheelchair-bound | wheelchair user |
| mentally handicapped, mentally defective, retarded, subnormal | with a learning disability (singular) with learning disabilities (plural) |
| cripple, invalid | disabled person |
| spastic | person with cerebral palsy |
| able-bodied | non-disabled |
| mental patient, insane, mad | person with a mental health condition |
| deaf and dumb; deaf mute | deaf, user of British Sign Language (BSL), person with a hearing impairment |
| the blind | people with visual impairments; blind people; blind and partially sighted people |
| an epileptic, diabetic, depressive, and so on | person with epilepsy, diabetes, depression or someone who has epilepsy, diabetes, depression |
| dwarf; midget | someone with restricted growth or short stature |
| fits, spells, attacks | seizures |