Abstract
Language socialization in Deaf communities is unique in ways that are challenging for language socialization theory. Worldwide, indigenous signed languages emerge wherever Deaf individuals have sustained social interaction among themselves, but historically they have been stigmatized and marginalized. Most Deaf children are born into non-Deaf households without access to signed language from birth, often acquiring a signed language through informal social networks in later years. Following the recognition of signed languages as bona fide linguistic systems in the 1960s, ethnographic studies documented language socialization in a variety of contexts: families, educational settings, Deaf clubs, isolated Deaf/non-Deaf rural communities, and transnational events. As evidence of the linguistic status of natural signed languages mounted, political movements championing the rights of Deaf people as linguistic and cultural minorities led to the establishment of bilingual education programs for Deaf children. Simultaneously, changes in educational policy and advances in technology and medicine began to negatively affect patterns of signed language socialization. Most Deaf children are now educated in local school settings where signed languages are usually absent, and the dominant discourses promoting the techno-medical eradication of Deaf people threaten to obfuscate and trivialize the Deaf child’s need for optimal language socialization in natural signed languages and majority spoken languages. One surprising characteristic of signed language communities is their tenacity in the face of efforts to suppress and eradicate them, especially given the discontinuity of traditional caregiver-to-child language socialization across generations. Signed language socialization studies in such circumstances promise contributions to theory building offered by few communities.
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Notes
- 1.
The authors use capital Deaf (with a capital D) throughout the chapter to portray Deaf people through an anthropological perspective, except when denoting an individual’s hearing status.
- 2.
DEAF-WORLD (Lane et al. 1996) denotes a community not defined by geography or ethnicity that consists of speakers who use an indigenous signed language as a primary language..
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Erting, C.J., Kuntze, M. (2017). Signed Language Socialization in Deaf Communities. In: Duff, P., May, S. (eds) Language Socialization. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02327-4_26-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02327-4_26-2
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Signed Language Socialization in Deaf Communities- Published:
- 31 March 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02327-4_26-2
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- 17 December 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02327-4_26-1