James Neuliep's Intercultural Communication: Deaf Culture And Community

Introduction to Deaf Culture While the terms culture and community are defined differently, individuals within the Deaf world use them almost synonymously. According to James Neuliep (2012), author of Intercultural Communication – A Contextual Approach, cultures can be defined by their value and belief systems and by the actions of their members (p. 19). Community, on the other hand, as defined by Merriam-Webster (2014), refers to a group of people who have the same interests, religion, race, etc. When taking into account both of the definitions, one might make the assumption that all deaf people and only deaf people are part of the same culture or community, but this is not the case. Unlike other cultures, the Deaf culture does not exist within a confined location. There are deaf individuals all over the world. These individuals do not necessarily share religion or race but they do share a common language, Sign Language. Language will be discussed at length in later sections of this analysis. Although deaf individuals have been a part of our society for hundreds of years, deaf culture wasn’t truly recognized until 1965. The idea that Deaf people had a culture of their own was first written in the Dictionary of American Sign

These individuals attempt to identify themselves with hearing people and consider their hearing loss solely in medical terms (partially or totally unable to hear). An uppercase “D” describes deaf individuals who consider themselves to be members of the deaf culture and have a strong deaf identity (Padden & Humphries, 1988). With that being said, it is also fair to state that not all members of the deaf culture/community share the inability to hear. In the Deaf community any individual that shares the common beliefs, values and most importantly language can be accepted into the Deaf