Writing as Being: On the Existential Primacy of Writing for a Deaf Scholar

Abstract

This article employs analytic autoethnography to study online events and social media that I participated in as a deaf scholar during the COVID-19 pandemic. With reference to Derrida’s philosophy of deconstruction, this article asserts the existential primacy of writing as a critical subject of inquiry for confronting normative language ideologies about what language is and how and where language is produced, received, understood, and performed.

An Instagram Content Analysis: Investigating the Autisticats

“…Friedner and Block (2017) identify similarities and differences in the ways that society and healthcare spaces view autism and deafness. There is a similar concept tied to deafness and autism, which is the notion of non-normative ways of communicating, such as signing, gesturing, written communication, or augmented and alternative communication (Snoddon, 2022). According to Snoddon (2022) both autistic and deaf people are scrutinized for their non-normative ways of communicating, and treatments are often concerned with correcting this.…”

“…There is a similar concept tied to deafness and autism, which is the notion of non-normative ways of communicating, such as signing, gesturing, written communication, or augmented and alternative communication (Snoddon, 2022). According to Snoddon (2022) both autistic and deaf people are scrutinized for their non-normative ways of communicating, and treatments are often concerned with correcting this. Cochlear implants, ABA, and the constant search for cures, normalizing behaviours and even early diagnoses send clear messages that both autism and deafness are problems that require fixing.…”

The practical ethics of linguistic integration: Three challenges

“…Rooted in a "relational understanding of effect" (2), they constitute an "everyday flow of forces, charges, energies, moods and atmospheres [that] is crucial for developing our understandings of the fabric of different relationships, which cannot be grasped by employing conventional analyses of power" (2). 14 On affordances in language see, e.g., Ayala 2016;Snoddon 2022. completely in the linguistic image of others at the expense of their own self. The notion of relief, as I discussed above, may be seen as antithetical to the very logic that underlies linguistic integration; and yet, I contend, it constitutes a fundamental part of the conceptual core of any relational notion of integration and the intersubjective structure of its configurational logic.…”

Signing songs and the openings of semiotic repertoires

“…Song signing also exposes tensions within the translanguaging construct for deaf signers due to their more precarious access to languages (see De Meulder et al 2019;Hodge and Goswell 2023). Semiotic repertoires include the different communicative resources that people have access to and become evident during encounters that reveal people's sensory 'asymmetries' (De Meulder et al 2019;Snoddon 2022). Such resources may be acquired, lost, or never emerge over the course of an individual's life trajectory and their participation or nonparticipation in socio-cultural spaces (Kusters et al 2017;Snoddon 2022).…”

“…Semiotic repertoires include the different communicative resources that people have access to and become evident during encounters that reveal people's sensory 'asymmetries' (De Meulder et al 2019;Snoddon 2022). Such resources may be acquired, lost, or never emerge over the course of an individual's life trajectory and their participation or nonparticipation in socio-cultural spaces (Kusters et al 2017;Snoddon 2022). In signing songs, the limitations and proficiencies of artists' and audience members' linguistic and semiotic repertoires emerge.…”