Talk:Deaf individual

Motivation for Deaf individual article
Note: originally posted in Talk:Deaf

Deafness-related articles need to be broken up, but simply having Hearing impairment and Deaf culture is too simple a split.

This article (Deaf individual) is not specifically about Deaf culture. Nor is it a page about deaf individuality. It is a disambiguation page so that any link to "deaf" can be given a proper meaning and all parties can be happy. Hearing impairment is not the relevent issue when talking about members of deaf society, just as deaf culture is not relevant when talking about a late deafened adult. That is why I have made a disambiguation page. I have used the term "Deaf individual" exactly for the reason you have stated: so as not to have to use the group term "The deaf". If you prefer we can make "Deafness" into a similiar disambiguation page where instead of "pre-lingually deaf individual" it would say "pre-lingual deafness" etc, but this would be somewhat redundant.

Deafness and hearing impairment are very broad topics, and you cannot simply seperate out deaf culture from hearing impairment. I'm not saying that from a moral or partisan point of view, but from a practical one. Topics like "treatment" are going to be POV if their only mention of the other side of the debate is "see also: deaf culture".

Having said that, not all types of deafness have such controversy. And there's no reason to tie up a topic such as late onset deafness in "medical vs cultural" debates. That is why I have made a deaf individual disambiguation page so the apropriate article can be chosen from a link to "deaf" or "deafness". As a bonus, topics like "How to communicate" will make a lot more sense and be a lot less vague when you choose a topic from Deaf individual. Similiarly "Causes of deafness" will also be less vauge as you might get some indication of what age is being talked about. And hearing protection doesn't need to be mixed with deaf schooling. Less vague means the articles will make more sense to read, and will be easier to write.

I'm not doing this for partisan reasons. If you read other posts you'll see I have been opposed to Ray Foster's zealotry.

Splitting deafness into Hearing impairment and Deaf culture is overly simple. If you have a better suggestion for a split than the topics in Deaf individual please say so, or edit that page.

--Pengo 02:23, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Any page with "individual" in its title carries the risk of being viewed as politically correct lingo. Is it not much more straightforward to merge this into hearing impairment? I equally feel that pre-lingually deaf individual should be renamed to pre-lingual deafness, and personal aspects discussed in its context.
 * At the moment, all these articles are flourishing into a walled garden, a small group of internally consistent articles that only link to each other. This is problematic for more than one reason. For one thing, it is not NPOV. Moreover, the terminology is confusing and esoteric (or maybe that is just Ray's style). Finally, I still do not understand why deaf culture can (or should) be seen separately from the actual disability. How is deaf culture expressed? More visual? JFW | T@lk  00:38, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * You'll have to read Models of Deafness to know the reason why deafness is expressed culturally. However, the possiblity of you or anyone else doing that seems to be an impossibility since you've insisted you won't allow "deaf" to be redirected to a page that could provide that very disambiguation. It's about language. Since "deaf" is the most likely search term, you've basically nullified any possiiblity for your very own question to be answered. It's right there in plain English on the Models of Deafness article. You are displaying your own partisonship by removing the cultural view of deafness from consideration. At least I admit my biases so that others are aware and will help me identify them and correct them when I can't see them. But you "insist" and back it up with you M.D. degree and your 10,000 edits.  When you redirected "deaf" from "deaf individual" to "hearing impairment" you made this statement:


 * "No, deaf is not about "The Deaf" - whoever links to deaf will expect something about hearing impairment, not the cultural phenomenon".


 * That is biased and faulty logic because: 1) Knowledge is not a popularity contest. You are not the judge of what information readers should and should not have. 2) The logic of that conclusion, if applied to other disambiguations, would mean that a word like "cool" would be restricted to its literal mean and that any meaning that arose from the popular cultural meaning of cool (i.e.: "interesting," "popular" "acceptable", etc., etc.) couldn't be used because, according to your rationale, people won't expect them.  3) Wikipedia embraces a policy of descriptive explanation, not proscribed explanation. By directing "deaf" away from the disambiguation pages of deaf individual or Models of Deafness you are literally proscribing what the term can mean by confining it to a single context.  I protest that action on ethical grounds established by this publication.


 * On my Talk page you posted this remark that further demonstrates your bias: "This is because MOST readers, when looking for information on deafness, are NOT primarily interested in the cultural phenomenon that you and others have been pushing forcefully." Doctor, with all due respect, American Sign Language is the fourth most used language in the United States, a country represented by over 200 ethnic groups from throughout the world.  Source: National Institutes of Health. At last count, Deaf Culture and American Sign Language were/are taught in over 1,000 American Colleges and Universities and is authorized to fulfill the foreign language requirement for undergraduate study in many of them.  Besides the near 2 million native users of sign language in the United States, our system of higher education has between 20 and 40 thousand new students of deaf culture and sign language each academic year and that has being the standard for almost two decades.  As I said to you the first time we interacted, I don't expect you to accept the premise of cultural deafness. But for you to use the features of this site to, it appears, prevent any conflict with you own view of deafness, it does not favor you with a image of nonpartisianship.   Ray Foster 01:57, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Any page with "individual" in its title carries the risk of being viewed as politically correct lingo.


 * Jfdwolff, it appears you have not read my arguments or the articles in question. Please read Deaf culture, Deaf individual, and Models of deafness before further commenting! I'm happy to change the title to "Deaf person" if that seems less scarily PC to you. I'd be equally happy to change the title to "deafness". Equally I'm fine with "pre-lingual deafness" instead of "pre-lingually deaf individual". However you've given no good reason to do so.


 * Please realise the difference between deafness and deaf person (and deaf) is similiar to that between womanhood and woman (and womankind). I don't see anyone trying to get the article woman changed to muliebrity. It really isn't an issue.


 * You'll also note that almost all links to deaf or deafness are about deaf people, and not discussions about disabilities or conditions per se, just as links to woman are about women and not about the state of being a woman.


 * You said: "Finally, I still do not understand why deaf culture can (or should) be seen separately from the actual disability." and I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that or how it contradicts anything I've said.


 * As for growing a walled garden. Again please read my reasons at the top of this talk page. I would like to break up (and replace) the hearing impairment page, because talking about so many forms of deafness in one article is clumsy. If you have any NPOV issues, please state what they are.


 * --Pengo 03:31, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It appears you have been misunderstanding me as well. Frankly, I have better things to do than argue about something that hardly has my interest. My intention was to adapt this set of articles to Wikipedia NPOV standards. At the moment, they reflect one particular POV which is only shared by a proportion of all people with a hearing impairment. The logical somersault about deaf redirecting to deaf individual instead of hearing impairment is too complicated for me; you insist on speaking about "deaf people", why I speak about "people with deafness". The difference is subtle but apparently big enough to lead to pitched terminology battles. Perhaps it is me with the POV. JFW | T@lk  18:16, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)