Deaf Cultural Identity Research Paper

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Deaf Cultural Identity The road to developing a healthy cultural identity for a deaf person can be a hard journey for most due to the fact the world is not built with Deaf people in mind. Having a strong cultural identity is important in any case so one can be confident in who they are and it helps in discovering what values an individual resonates with and looks for in their life. There are those who strongly ingrain themselves within the Deaf culture, while others might associate more with the hearing community. Though the path overall to a deaf person's identity development is different for every individual, there are at least seven categories within one's deaf identity and the development is usually based on a deaf person's upbringings …show more content…
The main factors, including a deaf child's education, language exposure, and family dynamic, is what determines their link with the deaf identity and the hearing community. Though there is importance on family dynamics, which influences other factors of a deaf child's exposure. Every household and family is different, and when looking into the lives of deaf children with hearing parents, it is seen that most difficulties with identity formation stem from ignorance of Deaf identities and culture from hearing parents and individuals. With educational needs, many deaf children do not get sent to deaf schools by hearing parents, being sent to hearing ones which greatly affects their learning capabilities and have less expressive freedom. This also contributes to language exposure as deaf children are not taught to use ASL when in these hearing environments. This creates many communication barriers and ends up leaving the deaf child having to adapt. In contrast, when in households of a Deaf parent and deaf child, these factors and development of a child's deaf identity is much greater because Deaf parents are able to pass on their life