Sociolinguistics of pathologized speech: A case of deaf and hard-of-hearing speakers of Taiwan Mandarin

Abstract

Speakers of pathologized speech have not received much attention from sociolinguists. This article explores the stylistic practices of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) people who demonstrate pathologized variants. This article adopts minimal pair reading and story reading to elicit various stylistic practices, as part of a larger project that aims to describe and empower DHH speech. Results show that DHH speakers who have experiences of medicalization are also the ones who consider learning the speech of hearing people necessary. A portion of these speakers embody their ideological stance—converging towards hearing speech—in the minimal pair reading.