Not a Hearing Loss, a Deaf Gain: Power, Self-Naming, and the Deaf Community in Higher Education

• In Event: Poster Session 1
  In Poster Session: Highlighting Research in Deaf Education

Abstract

Self-naming has long stood as the primary assertion of power for disenfranchised communities in the western world. While person first language (e.g. person who is deaf) has been the preferred language of disability and disability services in higher education for the last 20 years, members of the Deaf community have asserted their cultural capital, and indeed, their Deafhood, or defining the experience of being ‘deaf in the world’, through the power of self-naming. This research examines attitudes toward language, self-naming, and disability in the Deaf community in higher education and seeks to move toward a more attentive, sensitive, and responsive language policy in the academy.

Authors

• David James Thomas, University of the Arts

• Dennis Edward Gregory, Old Dominion University

• Shana L. Pribesh, Old Dominion University