Deaf People and the Question of Integration

By Hélène Hugounenq
English

The gap between the point of view of those who are deaf and those who can hear on integration is an important one. While those who can hear identify obvious advantages, the deaf, being directly concerned, see integration as a way to “to melt them in” without respecting their differences, especially their linguistic specificity. For the deaf who use sign language, being part of society is more about communication than segregation. The coexistence of people, along with the efforts to be like those who can hear, are more resented as obstacles than defended as advantages. An ethnographic census of signs that deaf people use to bring up this failed concept of integration may help to clarify it.

Keywords

  • integration
  • assimilation
  • deaf people
  • handicap
  • sign language
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