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 7:9
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
A New Deaf Community and Its Language
A Nine-Year Study in Nicaragua Reveals
Communication Among Its Deaf Community
“In 1968, there was no deaf community nor any commonly accepted form of sign
language used by groups of deaf persons in Nicaragua. But in 1997, when I did my
dissertation fieldwork, there was,” writes Laura Polich, author of
The Emergence
of the Deaf Community in Nicaragua: With Sign Language You Can Learn So Much.
“The role of deaf persons in the greater Nicaraguan society started to change
about sixty years ago, and it shifted dramatically in the past twenty-five years
when a deaf community formed. This evolution took place within such recent
memory that ethnographic and historical information about the period before the
community existed can still be collected. The main actors involved in the
community’s formation are still available to be interviewed. The Nicaraguan
experience, then, offers a fascinating focus for examination of how deaf
communities form, as well as a wonderful opportunity to think about why they
form.”
The Emergence of the Deaf Community in Nicaragua features interviews with the older members of the National Nicaraguan
Association of the Deaf (ANSNIC), hearing individuals who were involved in
providing education to deaf children in the 1946–2003 period, hearing people who
had deaf relatives, and the many members ranging from age 15-40 who
participate in activities at the ANSNIC clubhouse in Managua, the capital city
of Nicaragua. Polich further explains, “This book discusses the conclusions that I came to on
the basis of my nine-year investigation. I found that the use of a
‘standardized’ sign language in Nicaragua did not emerge as an independent
entity until there was a community of users meeting on a regular basis and
beyond childhood. The adoption and molding of Nicarguan Sign Language (NSL) did not happen suddenly,
but was a process that took many years and was fed by multiple influences.”
Read more about this captivating study in Polich’s
introduction, and
order The
Emergence of the Deaf Community in Nicaragua at a special savings of 20%.
 Disability
Studies Quarterly extols author Hannah Joyner’s
From Pity
Pride: Growing Up Deaf in the Old South stating, “Joyner’s book is a
well-documented look into a unique time in the history of the deaf community in
this country. With patient reading of this text filled with extensively quoted
original source material, the social and cultural history of the time does come
alive. In fact, the family stories described by this history do not seem all
that different from some of the stories that might be told by parents of deaf
children in present times.” In this unique and fascinating history, Hannah
Joyner depicts in striking detail the circumstances of those who were called “victims”
of a “terrible misfortune” and makes it clear that Deaf people in the North also
endured prejudice. She also explains how the cultural rhetoric of paternalism
and dependency in the South codified a stringent system of oppression and
hierarchy that left little room for self-determination for Deaf southerners.
Read more in chapter 7
“With the Eyes to
Hear and the Hands to Speak”, and
order From Pity to Pride.
 Gallaudet
University Press Institute, the educational division of Gallaudet University Press,
presents Revolutions in Sign Language Studies: Linguistics, Literature,
Literacy, the fifth international conference, to be held March 22-24, 2006
at the Kellogg Conference Hotel at Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C. Known
for their research on linguistics, sociolinguistics, literature, literacy and
Deaf people, and all other aspects of the study of sign languages, keynote
speakers include Benjamin Bahan, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Diane Lillo-Martin, Scott
Liddell, MJ Bienvenu, and many more.
Register on-line
now through December 15, 2005, and receive a 10% discount off the regular
registration fee of $250. For more information about the conference, go to
http://gupress.gallaudet.edu/gupiconference/index.html.
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