Sign language, the deaf and the epistemic violence of mainstreaming

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Abstract
This study of the relationship between the Deaf 1 1. The use of a capital letter for the word ‘Deaf in this context signifies the way the shared experience of deafness is associated with the development of a sub‐culture, a sense of community linked very closely to the use of sign language. Written with a capital ‘d’ the word therefore refers to a social network linked by a particular perception of the world and by resultant dispositions towards that world, dispositions sensed and expressed in a way not experienced or understood by the vast majority of hearing people, a marginalised ‘way of seeing’ ignored and thus devalued by the dominant culture which labels those who are deaf as ’lacking hearing’ and thus as ’disabled”;. For many of the Deaf, deafness does not render them disabled, though they acknowledge that they suffer an enormous social handicap due to discrimination against them by the hearing world, but rather simply renders them different. And so they see their deafness as a mark of identity, something to revel in and be proud of rather than as something to be embarrassed about, to be partially hidden beneath a mimicry of hearing people. They are thus not simply ‘deaf people’ but ‘the Deaf. View all notes , their native sign languages, and the encompassing dominant hearing societies and their cultures, within the context of schooling, demonstrates how the discourse on sign language within education is a vital ingredient in the assertion of symbolic power by the hearing establishment over the Deaf community. The use of Australia as a case study exemplifies, with a few notable exceptions, in particular Denmark and Sweden, the educational processes at work throughout the Western world as individual Deaf communities, each with their own distinct sign language, grapple with the dominance of the hearing culture within which they find themselves. The discursive assertion that education can only proceed through the dominant language, either in an oral or manual mode, rather than the use of native sign languages, will be shown to be an act of symbolic violence which restricts the access by the Deaf to education while ensuring that control over access to educational, linguistic and cultural resources remains in the hands of the hearing establishment through the agency of teachers of the deaf. Mainstreaming will be shown to reinforce rather than defuse this symbolic violence.

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