Theoretical Framework

The analysis of the Deaf community as a social group marked by their use of sign language and/ or hearing impairment lends itself to the theory of community of practice as proposed by Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet:

“A community of practice is an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor... practices emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor”

(Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 1992)

Applying this concept to Deaf culture, we can evaluate the endeavour of asserting and maintaining Deaf identity as leading to the emerging practice of sign language, thus highlighting the distinction between the medical condition of deafness and identification with the Deaf community. The combination of factors created by this analysis acknowledges that not everyone with a hearing impairment engages with the Deaf community; in fact, many may reject Deaf culture in order to avoid the implications of audist attitudes towards the Deaf. The representation of the Deaf community as a community of practice serves to demonstrate the relationship between a non-hearing individual’s conception of their own identity and their linguistic choices, between speech and sign.

Although the concept of community of practice is useful in the study of Deaf culture, it fails to fully comprehend the complexity of the Deaf identity, instead simply differentiating between the medically-hearing and non-hearing and the socially-Deaf and non-Deaf. This parallels the evaluation of identity formation using sameness and difference (Bucholtz and Hall 2004), which allows mainstream society to align deaf individuals with Deaf culture and thus distance them from the rest of society. On the other hand, deaf individuals can identify with Deaf culture an use this to gain a sense of belonging within a community, separate from mainstream society.

By contrast, the five principles proposed by Bucholtz and Hall (2005) -- namely emergence, positionality, indexicality, relationality and partialness -- are much more diverse in their attitudes towards identity, highlighting the importance of context and surroundings to its formation. The concept of emergence particularly resonates with the Deaf community, as this highlights how the property of Deafness can emerge in different ways in different contexts, depending on whether sign or speech is used:

"Identity is best viewed as the emergent product rather than the pre-existing source of linguistic and other semiotic practices and therefore as fundamentally a social and cultural phenomenon."

(Bucholtz and Hall, 2005)

The flexibility and variability of identity formed through emergence also addresses issues of agency, namely the power relations between mainstream society and the Deaf community and how this affects a Deaf individual’s different representations of their own identity, based on the attitudes towards deafness of those around them.

The positionality principle can also be applied to the Deaf community through the multilayered nature of Deaf identity and individual identity. Marking an individual as Deaf, ascribes to them a broad demographic category; this is most like used by mainstream society. Within this, local categories of education through oralism or sign language are divide the Deaf community, further defining identity in a more nuanced way. In order to bridge the gap between these broad and more specific categories, the different representations of the Deaf community must be analysed with reference to the different contexts and discourses in which they are found, recognising the multilayered nature of this identity. A similar analysis of Deaf culture is earned through the indexicality principle, with their identity represented in a variety of ways. Such representations depend on whether the speaker is Deaf or not, and the acquisition of language first through sign or oralism. These different characteristics manifest as different traits or behaviours, including: the overt mention of Deafness, hand gestures, use of sign, the context of the discourse (e.g. a group designed to bring together Deaf people), participant roles within discourse, the presence of hearing aids etc., and the use of sign language.

Bucholtz and Hall's indexicality principle draws attention to the signs and actions used by individuals, both linguistic and non-linguistic, and how these are interpreted by others in order to build a picture of identity. This process is also discussed by Asif Agha, who describes such signs, actions and appearances as "emblems" from which people can derive a sense of others' identity:

[Identity] is a way of talking about the emblematic functions of signs in behavior. An emblem is a thing to which a social persona is attached. It involves three elements; (1) a perceivable thing, or diacritic; (2) a social persona; (3) someone for whom it is an emblem (i.e., someone who can read that persona from that thing).

(Agha, 2006)

Agha's theoretical framework draws attention to the importance of those who interpret emblems, as it is them that draw the connection between the sign and the characteristic or persona, thus playing an essential role in the formation of identity. By applying this three-step process to the identity of the Deaf community, the part played by the Hearing community comes into focus, as it is them that perceive the signs and attach social meaning to them. Agha's approach also reveals the complexity of the interaction between the Deaf and Hearing worlds. In relating iconic signs for Deafness to the social persona of the disabled, mainstream society change their behaviour towards those with hearing impairments, which they in turn perceive and consequently change the self-conception of their identity. This illustrates the symbiotic nature of identity formation, indicating that the opinions and behaviours of others can greatly affect self-perception, and so stresses how the views and attitudes of the Hearing world impact upon the construction of Deaf identity.