So I was reading Shanna Groves' comments over at her Lip Reader blog (see link to your right under my blog list). She was talking about the concept of a hard of hearing culture, which I think is an interesting concept.
What makes a culture? To me it's a group of people sharing a collective way of doing things, with traditions and generally a common language. Take Deaf culture for example. In Shanna's blog she says "The Deaf culture is something its participants are proud of, a culture with a shared ASL language and communication style that goes back many years".
So a culture shares a set of common things. It has an identity. People who are hard of hearing may have different ways of communicating. I for one, communicate orally, use hearing aids, lip reading and I watch a person's body language and gesturing when they speak. I've also started watching movies with the captions on because I find it easier to watch without having to concentrate on every word so much.
There are lots of different ways to communicate - direct sign language, orally, having a sign language interpreter, lipreading, using various assistive listening devices such as FM systems and hearing aids etc.
Keeping all this in mind, does a hard of hearing culture exist, given the varying communication methods? If one does exist, what does it look like? What are the collective things that make it a culture? I think a culture can be built on the fact that there are things which are unique to certain people. Eg. I have never felt part of the hearing community because I don't have fully functioning hearing, nor do I feel a part of the Deaf community as I don't know how to sign (yet!) and I've never shared in that culture.
To make things more confusing, I generally hear well in quiet environments but am pretty much deaf in noisy ones with lots of background noise. I feel like I'm in the middle. Just some food for thought.
Clear Surgical Mask for Lip Readers
10 years ago
CAUTION FLAG!
ReplyDeleteDefinitions (as used by Shannon Groves) differ in the United States, as the war was won by Gallaudet, and we all settled on it:
"Hearing Impaired" is the all-encompassing term that covers Hard-Of-Hearing (HOH), deaf, and Culturally Deaf (Deaf, with a capital "D").
When Gally picks a fight, they usually win worldwide; so for better or worse, their definitions has become the de facto worldwide standard.
Don't like it?! Go argue with them, mot me!