Talk:Deaf culture

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment in Fall 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Coleman laura. 20:49, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment in Spring 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Eric.setzer.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 21 January 2020 and 16 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): RCovell.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
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Deaf Gain
In the Deaf Culture wiki page, we should add the section "Deaf Gain."

Nowadays, more Deaf people are aiming to re-frame the idea of the Hearing Loss to Deaf Gain. Instead of to see how Deaf people needed to be fixed, to learn how Deaf people do contribute to our society. Without Deaf people on this planet, it wouldn't be the same as of today. Deaf people contribute to our society in many ways; to bring new perspective that nobody would thought of it. When a Deaf person understand their identity, they start to embrace and to see in positive ways, known as Deaf Gain.

David M's peer review
Howdy Daniel Patrick and Tyler Cody,

I wasn't sure which part you revised but one thing popped up in my thought while I was reading. In deaf and Deaf section, it is a hot topic nowadays. I suggest you to add like Deaf people tend are from deaf school, Gallaudet, etc while deaf from mainstream or not really proud of deaf.. maybe it could help the readers to understand content background behind it? just a thought!

how about to add some info about deaf and their typical behavior such as tap on shoulder, use light to get attention, bang on the table, etc... give readers better understand of deaf... looking forward for your ASL VIDEOS!

-Mully Djmully (talk) 22:12, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Recent edits
I reverted a series of six edits by a student editor. Much of it is fine, in particular the new Education section, but it was behind some problematic stuff, and couldn't revert just the latter; afaic the Education section can be readded without discussion. Other issues need discussion. Some talking points:

While Harlan Lane is an excellent resource, you can't just remove other excellent resources in order to add him, as you did in this edit. Also, your claim in the edit summary about "bias" and "politically correct" is a potential red flag. Your "impacts of deaf culture" edit is fine. Your "make it more concise and clear" edit moves some full refs around, subsituting named refs and vice versa (padden1988) which doesn't hurt and is a wash at the level of someone reading the article, but is confusing while reading a diff; this is a minor point as it doesn't hurt the article, I just don't understand the reason for it. Otoh, this edit removed sourced content (mindess2006, bakpad1978, Lentz et al.) without explanation other than "conciseness", but Baker & Padden are high-status authors in the deaf community, and Lentz, Mikos & Smith have made large contributions to sign language teaching and research, and these removals need more explanation than that (and imho, should not be removed, but I'd like to hear your reasoning). The new Education section is also quite good, although read the Manual of Style on MOS:SECTIONS for proper formatting of titles. Mathglot (talk) 20:51, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi there! I totally understand your reasoning for a lot of this. As I am a student editor doing this for the first time, it is a learning process and I appreciate the help. I'd like to address any concerns and figure out some solutions.

I'm currently in the process of adding back in the other sources that were on the article. Unfortunately, the format we use in my class to transfer our edits does not move the citations with, and I failed to notice that these sources had been removed. As for the red flag in my claim, I was wondering what about it sparks concern with you. I was unclear on how detailed I needed to be when talking about the changes I made, and would love help. I do, however, believe that the phrasing on this section came across poorly when myself and others were reading it. I'm not sure it was intended, but sentences like "There are three views on Deaf people" come across as mildly offensive and unclear. Any advice you can give, I would appreciate!Coleman laura (talk) 01:22, 30 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm in a bit of a rush, so just quickly for now: you're absolutely right about the "three views", and I noticed that at the time, and regreetted having to revert that along with the other stuff; had you made a smaller edit with just that or nearby stuff in it, I never would've reverted it. The change to the wording you did there was very much an improvement, and I encourage you to put it back in. More advice later.  Oh, please read WP:TALK, WP:THREAD and WP:INDENT about colons and indenting at talk pages, and re or ping about notifying editors.  Later, Mathglot (talk) 01:36, 30 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Why don't we start on areas of agreement: why don't you go ahead and put your education section back in as it was, as well as the "three views" fix. Then we can move on to the other stuff. Agreed? Adding  Mathglot (talk) 23:21, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

US or global?
As Shalor rightly points out here, this article is written primarily from the viewpoint of the United States and doesn't take a global approach. This merits a Globalize/US banner, and I've added one to the article. The underlying problem is that the current title, "Deaf culture" is contrary to article title policy, in particular, WP:PRECISION, because the content is about "Deaf culture in the United States" but the title is "Deaf culture". This mismatch between title and content cannot remain; something has to change: either the content, or the title. As I see it, there are only two approaches to fix this situation: In my opinion, #1 is preferable in theory, but practically speaking, it isn't going to happen; the article likely would end up 90% US, and a few token sentences about the rest of the world. So, that's not the way to go. A better solution, imho, is to retitle this article Deaf culture in the United States, and after that's done, start a new article from scratch called "Deaf culture" which would be in Summary style and start off as a stub, with a brief section about the U.S. summarizing this article, and a few other sections about deaf culture elsewhere; probably enough information could be found to add brief sections for the UK, Australia, and France for starters, and then slowly ramp it up. That would be a much more balanced approach, rather than an article that is hugely top-heavy for the U.S. and almost nothing about anyplace else. Mathglot (talk) 22:52, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Add sufficient material from other countries to give the article a more worldwide view.
 * 2) Retitle the article so that the title matches the current content (and then create a new article for the global view).
 * That's not a bad idea. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:06, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Proposed merge/rename
Given the title-content mismatch explained above at, I'm proposing a merge of most of this article into Deaf American and a rename of that one to Deaf culture in the United States (currently a redirect). Deaf American has substantial overlap with this article. Probaby what should happen, is that Deaf American should be renamed Deaf culture in the United States, and 90% of this article should be merged into it, leaving a stub. The stub should then be expanded into a summary-style article covering the whole world, with just a brief section on the United States summarizing it, and pointing to the newly renamed "Deaf culture in the United States". Pinging contributors . Mathglot (talk) 00:15, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
 * No further comments here, please; the merge discussion has been moved; see link below. Mathglot (talk) 01:19, 30 November 2018 (UTC)


 * No longer at that location; can now be found here: Mathglot (talk) 07:13, 24 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I've removed the tags from the article because the split to Deaf culture in the United States was accomplished 2 years ago, although I think both articles still might need a rebalancing.--Pharos (talk) 03:14, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Proposed Edits
I am a student editor with a few proposed edits to this article. I am still learning about formatting and etiquette of Wikipedia, so please let me know what I can improve on!

First, I would like to rephrase the following sentence "When used as a cultural label especially within the culture, the word deaf is often written with a capital D and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. When used as a label for the audiological condition, it is written with a lower case d."

to make it read: "Within the community, Deaf using a capital "D" is used to reference the cultural identity and deaf using a lowercase "d" refers to the medical condition." I think this change makes the idea easier to understand.

Second, I propose the addition of the following bolded lines to this paragraph:

"Members of the Deaf community tend to view deafness as a difference in human experience rather than a disability or disease. However, deaf adults who are verbal and adults who became deaf late in life usually view it opposite of the Deaf community - as an impairment. Many members take pride in their Deaf identity and consider deafness a linguistic and cultural identity. Unlike some other cultures, a deaf person may join the community later in life, rather than needing to be born into it. Deaf people, in the sense of a community or culture, can then be seen as a minority group, and therefore some who are a part of this community may feel misunderstood by those who don't know sign language. Hearing family members may need to learn sign language in order for the deaf person to feel included and supported. 'Although it is common for people to marry within their own culture, the Deaf community has the highest rate of intra-cultural marriages. Around 90% of deaf people marry someone who is also deaf." Please note that there is some rephrasing of information as well and that the information on education was eliminated (as it is part of the education section). My third edit would be to delete the following bolded line in order to make the lead section more concise:'

"The community may include hearing family members of deaf people and sign-language interpreters who identify with Deaf culture. It does not automatically include all people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. As educator and American Sign Language interpreter Anna Mindess writes, "it is not the extent of hearing loss that defines a member of the deaf community but the individual's own sense of identity and resultant actions." As with all social groups that a person chooses to belong to, a person is a member of the Deaf community if he/she "identifies him/herself as a member of the Deaf community, and other members accept that person as a part of the community."

'''The final edits I would like to make to this page is to change subheading name "behavioral patterns" to "social customs"

Also, I propose replacing the bullet list and unsourced information in the "behavioral patterns" section with the following text:

The primary basis of social customs in Deaf culture stem from the need to maintain good eye contact and visibility, and to improve the conditions of signing in order to simplify and increase comfort. These can create variation between Deaf culture and the other cultures around Deaf individuals. Culturally Deaf people have rules of etiquette for getting attention, walking through signed conversations, leave-taking, and otherwise politely negotiating a signing environment. It is customary to make and maintain steady, locked eye contact when communicating in deaf culture. They notify their friends before removing themselves from eyeshot (ex. Communicate that they are going to the restroom, etc.) Deaf people also keep each other informed of what is going on in one's environment. It is common to provide detailed information when leaving early or arriving late; withholding such information may be considered rude. Deaf people may be more direct or blunt than their hearing counterparts. When giving introductions, Deaf people typically try to find common ground. Deaf people may also consider time differently. Showing up early to large-scale events, such as lectures, is typical. This may be motivated by the need to get a seat that provides the best visual clarity for the Deaf person."

Coleman laura (talk) 15:22, 3 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Coleman laura, Just a brief comment about Talk page form: that first paragraph was a bit of a Wall of Text, and it was a bit hard to find the two sentences you were comparing; maybe use a list, or indent the two things you're comparing or something. If you're comparing whole paragraphs, then indentation or &lt;blockquote> would be the way to go; then you can use bolding as you did, or color (see Red, Green and so on) to show the before/after changes. You can also use strikeout text  to indicate stuff you propose to delete. Looking at the wikicode, I could see that you added a newline character in a couple of places, as if to create a new paragraph, but you need two newlines to do that, i.e., a completely blank line to separate paragraphs.  So, I took the liberty to edit your post to create those paragraph breaks; I hope that's okay. Anyway, on to your comments.
 * Preposing "within the community": It is easier to understand it the way you propose, but is it true? By "community", I assume you meant the Deaf community, but if that's the case, I think that rearrangement would not be an improvement, because actually I believe the D/d usage comes from the academic community (which of course intersects with the Deaf community). Now, I said that I believe it comes from the academic community, and this is the Talk page where I don't have to put a reference for it, i.e., it's just my belief and I might be wrong. But, on the article page, we have to stick to what we can verify.  So, it could be I'm wrong, and you could write it that way. The point is, you have to find out and verify it. I think Croneberg was the first, and he's in both communities, so that's a starting point. So, which community  (And then there's even the sub-question of whether hearing academics, like Stokoe for example, are part of the Deaf community; I'd say "no", but that's just my opinion.). Also, there's no such thing as "capital D deaf" in sign language afaik (well, not in one sign anyway, although you can of course express the concept) so if the Deaf community is "using" capital-D deaf, that means in writing, so are we back to talking about Deaf academia, or what? That all needs sorting out.
 * Other changes: As far as the specific changes to paragraphs two and three you propose, we could discuss those, but there's another issue here, because the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs are part of the lead. The lead of an article is supposed to summarize the body; it defines and serves as a brief introduction to the topic, and is not there to add any new or unique information. So basically, any changes you propose to the lead, need to be something that make it a better summary of the article body. That usually means, additional facts or new information or more detailed information of existing facts goes in the body first; then, if it's important enough, it gets summarized in the lead.  In this case, the situation is complicated by the fact that the Lead is already too long, and imho very poorly done.
 * If you still want to talk about your paragraph 2 and 3 changes, let me know. But there's another, and better way you could help improve the article, which would be much more important than those changes imho, and it's to fix the lead. This is a different sort of work than hunting down sources, writing citations, and adding them to the text, and I'm not sure how well it squares with whatever your college course requires of you. But for this particular article, fixing the lead would be a big improvement, and takes a different sort of skill set: you'd have to take a more 20,000-foot view of the whole article, see what it's about, make sense of what's in the body of the article, and how well the lead does, or doesn't, summarize it. (Badly, in my view.)  It could be that whole paragraphs need to be moved out of the lead to the body, either in some existing section or a new one or ones, and the lead rewritten from scratch. This is a much tougher task than "just" adding text and citations, but it would also lead to a (much) greater improvement to the article.  I don't know if the amount of time you have for a course like this makes sense to take something like that on, but I get the impression from what you've written so far that you must be one of the top students, and not afraid to take on a big or tough job, so check with your instructor, and/or User:Shalor (Wiki Ed) and if you wanted to take this on, I can guide you.
 * No worries if you want to stick to the original plan, and maybe that squares better with your assignment, so just let me know what you want to do. If we want to deal with improvements to paragraphs 2 and 3, we still can. Mathglot (talk) 21:22, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Additions to the 'Diversity within Deaf Culture' section
I think it may be worth mentioning in this Wikipedia article about how Deaf People of Color are underrepresented within the U.S. Deaf Community. Several research articles have pointed out this fact and noted that, in general, Deaf literature and Deaf history being taught at schools are quite White-centric. In Deaf Education as well, Deaf Students of Color tend to have poorer academic outcomes than White Deaf students (especially those from Deaf families). Again, this can be corroborated by research studies, especially ones written by Deaf intersectional scholars/critical theorists. Anna Lim Franck 19:45, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

"Deaf supremacy" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Deaf supremacy. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. signed,Rosguill talk 22:28, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Videos in the article
The videos in this article only showing a man explaining something in American (?) Sign Language should either get subtitles or be removed. What's the point of having several videos on a topic on the English-language Wikipedia, that 99.9% of English speakers don't understand?

Imagine the article on Armenian culture had videos in Armenian without subtitles explaining aspects of Armenian culture.

Neozoen (talk) 20:43, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello, I agree with your concern about not having subtitles. The man in the video was using American Sign Language (ASL). I am fluent in ASL so I went ahead and added subtitles to the "Deaf culture Introduction" video. Hopefully, all of the videos will be accessible to everyone.

Hapalow (talk) 19:30, 14 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Nice work on the subtitles. I am new at this and supposed to ask a question for class assignment.  I was wondering how do we contribute to subtitle scripts for the remaining videos which do not currently have subtitles or CC?  Swoop Pedagogy (talk) 15:12, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Importance of capitalizing Deaf?
I have heard - somewhat word of mouth, but from a classmate who has done a decent amount of study on Deaf culture in college - that to some Deaf people, lowercase-d "deaf" is considered a slur. Not just that it reflects a deficit-focused idea of an "impairment" which they object to, but intense enough to immediately upset a Deaf person reading it. Maybe that's just that one person's idea of what they consider a harmful slur, but if it's a more common perspective among Deaf people, should that information

1. be added to the article and

2. be reflected in the language the article uses? (since I believe Wikipedia standardly avoids referring to groups of people by what they would consider a slur, even if it might be ignorantly used by many people - for example, the article on Romani people thoroughly explains the word "gypsy" but uses "Roma" and "Romani" far more often.)

Would love to engage with others' thoughts and expertise on these matters. Jojopeanut (talk) 02:46, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It very much depends on the person, the situation, and the context in which the word is used. It's quite vague to state that "some Deaf people" find something offensive. How many is "some Deaf people"? What is the context? We definitely don't need such a vague generalization in the article. We need a lot more specifics, and we need very reliable sources. In my opinion we also need a clear consensus here. Otherwise it's Wikipedia that is being offensive to Deaf people. This is further complicated in this article by the use of "deaf" people in general, not necessarily those who identify with the Deaf community. Does the Deaf community consider it offensive to refer to someone who does not identify with the Deaf community as "Deaf"? There was a similar discussion at the talk page for Jews. Someone wanted to change all references to "Jews" to "Jewish people" because the editor thought "Jews" was offensive; in reality the vast majority of Jews use the term "Jews". Wikipedia is on a slippery slope when it tries to make sweeping generalizations about what a certain group of people consider offensive. I suggest not proceeding any further until it is discussed at WT:WikiProject Deaf. Sundayclose (talk) 02:53, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
 * We don't change terminology in articles because of what some people want. We use Wikipedia's policies and guidelines to determine issues like this, which generally comes down to how a majority of reliable English sources use the term. We are an encyclopedia, a tertiary source; we don't make judgments about what's offensive, or what isn't, or it would never end; we let reliable sources deal with such things, and simply follow what they do. Wikipedia's use of the word Romani isn't because some Allowable Ethnonyms Board has decided to favor it in order not to be offensive; we do it, because that's what the majority of reliable English sources do.  Also, WP:LOCALCONSENSUS does not trump policy.  Mathglot (talk) 19:02, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Generally I agree. As I noted above, in general we don't make judgments about what is offensive. But this can be a gray area. There is widely acknowledged offensive terminology that would not be acceptable on Wikipedia. That is a result of general societal norms about offensiveness. If "deaf" lower case became offensive by society in general, it would not be acceptable on Wikipedia. As a related example, the terms ""deaf and dumb" and "deaf-mute", although discussed as terms on Wikipedia, would not be acceptable for general usage. But if Wikipedia had been available a hundred years ago, those terms would have been used with little objection. There are other examples, such as idiot, moron, and imbecile. The euphemism treadmill forces the acceptability of some terms to change over time.


 * Capitalization also can be a gray area. Capitalization generally is a stylistic matter that is covered under Wikipedia guidelines; if there's a policy I'm not aware of it, but feel free to correct me. Guidelines are more flexible than policies. For example, see bell hooks. Sundayclose (talk) 19:49, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion: Diversity within Deaf Culture and LGBTQ+
I am currently working on a section on the Deaf Culture Wikipedia page to expand the Deaf LGBTQ institutions section, but this page is lacking discussion of the LGBTQ+ community outside of this section. I see under "Acculturation" that there is a section titled "Diversity within Deaf Culture." I believe this subhead should be separated into a new section and that diversity should refer to not only races, but also address the LGBTQ community. A subheader could be added addressing the intersection with the LGBTQ+ community. The section could note the prevalence of queer people in the Deaf community and discuss homophobia in the history of ASL. Further, it should discuss history of Deaf people leading efforts in the gay liberation movement, efforts of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to advocate for the Deaf community, development of resources and organizations for Deaf queer people, and Deaf drag. Kmak 32 (talk) 17:00, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

"Deaf ethnicity" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Deaf ethnicity and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. An anonymous username, not my real name 21:34, 4 February 2023 (UTC)