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Translanguaging in Deaf Culture
Translanguaging in deaf culture focuses on sensorial accessibility, as translanguaging still exists in deaf culture, it is just different than translanguaging in non-deaf speakers. An example of translanguaging in deaf culture is when a “mixed deaf/hearing family communicates at the dinner table using mouthing, sign-speaking, voice, and signs.” Translanguaging can be used prescriptively and descriptively and uses a speaker’s entire linguistic range with disregard to the social and political sphere of languages. It also can be seen as the language practices of bilingual speakers. An ongoing issue in the deaf community is the push for signed languages to be considered minority languages, since deaf speakers have a ”sensorial inaccessibility to spoken languages.” There is also an issue of access to signed languages for deaf children, as for many, this access is compromised. Deaf speakers also face sensorial asymmetries, and theories like translanguaging may threaten the political discourse for sign language rights as signed languages were seen as merely gestures fifty years ago, but not as real languages. Since deaf children use a variation of both signed and spoken languages, they share experiences similar to that of other bilingual children. Translanguaging in the deaf community is thus unique because they use both visual and gestural, as well as spoken and written language modality.