Essay On Deaf American Culture

In Paul McLean’s book Culture in Networks “The term Culture is one of the most complex terms in the social sciences to define, but we can understand it broadly to refer to the knowledge, beliefs, expectations, values, practices, and material objects by means of which we craft meaningful experiences for ourselves and with each other.” So from a persons country to their city, from a persons school to their work, and from a persons belief system to their social activates each community a person belongs to has their own socials customs that will dictate that community’s culture. These social customs might seem quite different to an outsider. How does your belonging to a specific culture affect your daily life and decisions, and what are the values, behaviors, and beliefs that make Deaf culture unique? First what exactly is culture and how does culture impact your life and the
First is the need to realize that little d deaf and Deaf with a capital D are two different things entirely. According to the National Association of the Deaf typically when someone uses little d deaf they are referring to the inability to hear or a person that just sees themselves as having a medical problem and does not interact with the deaf community. Alternatively when someone identifies as capital D Deaf they use sign language and are a part of the deaf culture, which is usually a tight knit community. How much a person does or does not belong to the community and what they choose to label themselves depends on many factors such as when the person became deaf, weather their parents were deaf or hearing and countless other variables. Such as person who is “late deafened” might be deaf but usually they are not part of the culture because “they do not have access to the knowledge, beliefs, and practices that make up the culture of Deaf people” (Humphries and