Signed Language Socialization in Deaf Communities

Abstract

Language socialization in Deaf communities is unique in ways that are challenging for language socialization theory. Most members of the DEAF-WORLD (Lane, Hoffmeister, and Bahan, 1996) have not followed a straightforward path to identification with and membership in a Deaf community. A small percentage of Deaf children are born into Deaf families where everyday interaction occurs within a visually based culture through a natural sign language. For these children, the process of language socialization is similar to that of most children; only the modality differs. But for the majority of Deaf children who are born to non-Deaf parents who do not expect their child to be deaf (lower case denotes hearing status; upper case denotes identity status), early access to sign languages is absent. Since these children do not hear, they cannot fully participate in the spoken language socialization environment their parents naturally provide. And, because sign lan-guages have been stigmatized historically and Deaf communities have been oppressed, marginalized, and some would argue colonized by non-Deaf majorities (Ladd, 2003; Markowicz and Woodwar, 1978), the primary sites of language socialization for most Deaf people have been community institutions such as Deaf schools and clubs. Deaf people have acquired sign language and become oriented to the DEAF- Natural sign languages have emerged whenever and wherever Deaf individuals have had the opportunity for frequent and sustained social interaction among themselves. With the establishment of residential schools for Deaf students in Europe during the eighteenth century, access to natural sign languages greatly increased for Deaf people, especially for Deaf children. Those residential schools and the linguis-tic communities they gave rise to provided institutional stability and continuity of language socialization across generations.