American Deaf Culture Essay

An Examination of German Deaf Culture and American Deaf Culture
Among most, if not all, cultures in the world there can be found a Deaf subculture. The Deaf community, while small, is widespread. Throughout this course we have talked at length about the many nuances of the American Deaf culture in particular, and how it is similar and sometimes very different from the hearing culture that most of us experience on a day-to-day basis. In the same way, American Deaf culture can be similar to, and different from other Deaf subcultures across the world. In this paper, I look to uncover the many resemblances and differences seen between American Deaf Culture and German Deaf Culture by analyzing three keystones of the Deaf world: cultural details, education, and sign language. One very important aspect of both the American and German Deaf worlds is their strong aversion for being considered handicapped or disabled. Both cultures view their lack of hearing and how this affects their daily life not as an inconvenience, but rather as a different, yet equally productive way of living. Through this lens it is easy to see why terms such as “hearing impaired” or “taub” are thought of as derogatory to the deaf. Nonetheless, in America and Germany alike, deaf people are still considered legally, and

Through this analysis and the increasing amount of similarities it becomes easy to see the collectivist mentality of the Deaf world as a whole. The beliefs of one deaf subculture do not seem to vary widely from one to the next and whatever one subculture of the close-knit Deaf community faces, many others have surely faced or will face in their own time. This has resulted in a German Deaf culture and the American Deaf culture that have developed convergently, rather than divergently, without compromising their own