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Deaf Culture

Deaf culture is an integral part of the Deaf community. To understand Deaf culture, it is helpful to consider the concept of culture in general. Culture is commonly defined as the values, traditions, norms, customs, arts, history, folklore, and institutions that a group of people, who are unified by race, ethnicity, language, nationality, or religion, share. In essence, it is the way of life shared by the members of a group.

The Deaf community then has its own culture. In the United States, one of the strongest unifying and central components of Deaf culture is the use of American Sign Language (ASL). It makes the group a linguistic and cultural minority. This shared language serves to bring together groups of people who are deaf and hard of hearing. In addition to a shared language, people within Deaf culture also share common beliefs, values, norms, customs, institutions, and history.

How Deaf Culture Is Learned

As with any culture, Deaf culture is learned and passed down from generation to generation. Most cultures are passed down within families. However, because 90 percent of Deaf people are born to hearing parents, only a small percentage of Deaf people learn their culture from their family. As a result, most Deaf people learn their culture through interactions with their peers and other Deaf people – often in Deaf schools and other community institutions.

Deafhood

For many Deaf people, developing a Deaf identity is the result of a process. Recently, many Deaf people have begun to refer to this process as "Deafhood." According to Paddy Ladd, who coined the term, Deafhood is "the process of defining the existential state of Deaf "being-in-the-world." Deafhood is not seen as a finite state but as a process by which Deaf individuals come to actualize their Deaf identity, positing that those individuals construct that identity around several differently ordered sets of priorities and principles, which are affected by various factors such as nation, era and class."

Despite the existence of a Deaf culture, it is important to remember that not everyone who is deaf, hard of hearing, or who has hearing loss identifies as culturally Deaf. Whether one identifies as deaf with a lowercase "d" or Deaf with a capital "D" (i.e., culturally Deaf) is a personal choice and should be respected.

In this Section

In this section you'll find more information on different elements of Deaf culture:

• language,
• community institutions,
• values and norms, and
• history.

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