Question

Harlan Lane identifies two dominant social constructions of deafness. They are the disability construction and the linguistic minority construction. Explain the difference between these two constructions.

Answer 1

The main argument of Harlan Lane is to speak of 'Deafness' as a linguistic minority to eliminate the repercussions associated with the disability construction of deafness.

Deafness as a disability is legitimized by the use of 'deaf community' which refers to all people with significant hearing impairment. This has led to the acultural perspective on Deaf people as belonging to the disability community. Also, the construction is legitimized by the medical profession and later by the special education and welfare bureaucracy. The construction of disability also produces an effect of creating bonds that unite people with disabilities to the rest of society with whom they generally share not the only culture but also ranges of capacities and incapacities. Activists of deafness have joined professionals in promoting the disability construction of all deafness. The term linguistic minority construction of deafness refers to a much smaller group with a distinct manual language, culture, and social organization. It, however, speaks of the deaf community. The main task of linguistic minority construction is to counter and presents the parents of the 'deaf' with the task of convincing that their children have language and role models from the minority. The challenge facing the linguistic minority construction is that there is a little built-in cultural transmission of their beliefs into active actions