The protests at Gallaudet University have made me ponder something lately. I don’t know ASL (except for the very basic signs and the manual alphabet). Can anyone who does speak ASL tell me whether “deaf” and “Deaf” are different words in it? How do ASL speakers differentiate outside of print?
I don’t know much about being deaf but I have been around here long enough to know that there are some oddities surrounding this question that would never be intuitive to anyone outside of the deaf community. Wikipedia has some info.
“Deaf community and Deaf culture are two phrases used to refer to persons who are culturally Deaf as opposed to those who are deaf from the medical/audiological/pathological perspective. When used in the cultural sense, the word deaf is very often capitalized.”
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It’s the same gesture. I’d imagine the context would make a difference. And a lot of ASL involves body stance and facial expressions. An emphasised gesture would probably be enough to indicate ‘Deaf.’
But I am not deaf or Deaf, just took ASL classes, I can’t really say I speak it, I just memorized some of the language basically, so take my answer with a grain of salt.
In ASL, the signs do not have upper-case/lower-case versions. So “deaf” and “Deaf” would be signed the same way.
But as people have indicated, there is a difference in connotation between deaf and Deaf in the community. Somewhat analogous to the difference between describing someone as Negro, colored, black, Afro-American, etc.
Hmm. Thinking about it, when I mean ‘Deaf’, I typically use a facial expression to put extra emphasis on the word, or add a classifier that means ‘big’ before signing the word to indicate that I mean deaf-with-a-big-D. If I mean ‘deaf’, I don’t add any special modifiers or emphases to the word.
Does that help?
It does, actually. Thank you!
There’s actually a sign used for deaf people who aren’t seen as culturally deaf. (i.e. - deaf, not Deaf…)
You take the sign for “hearing person” which is usually signed in front of your mouth, and sign it on your forehead - meaning “thinks like a hearing person”… It’s basically a put-down… a “play-on-signs” as opposed to a play on words…
Sorry if I’m not clear, signs are hard to explain in English…