Interviewing Deaf Adults in Postsecondary Educational Settings: Stories, Cultures, and Life Histories

Abstract

This article provides a brief examination of how Deaf adults describe their life histories as learners and as workers in the workforce. We show how these histories are intricately tied to the movements in and around the participants' social positions as Deaf persons in a hearing world. Three discursive positions are evident in the talk of these interviewees in relation to Deafness: as disability, as logistic complexity, and as community/culture. We also show how the life stories produced in the interviews entail variations on the theme of fragmentation: the losing, missing, and finding of viable life circumstances. In addition, we discuss how the interviewer-interviewee relationship comes to embody a hearing community's interests, recasting a Deaf interviewee's everyday life into a series of curiosities.