Deafness
Deafness
is the inability to use the sense of hearing due to a loss of partial
hearing (hearing loss) or total hearing loss (cofosis) and unilateral
or bilateral hearing loss. Thus a deaf person is unable or hear. This
may be an inherited trait or may result from disease, trauma, long-term
exposure to noise, or aggressive medicines that hurt the auditory nerve.
So far you can distinguish two types of hearing loss
Sensory
Hearing Loss
Cases
in which hair cells of the inner ear or the nerves supplying it are damaged.
This hearing loss can range from mild to profound losses. It often affects
an individual's ability to hear certain frequencies more than others,
so that they hear sounds distorted but the use of a headset amplifier
can regulate that. At present the great technological benefits of digital
hearing aids are able to amplify only the frequencies of a deficient inversely
distorted wave for the deaf person to perceive the sound as similar as
possible as a hearing person would.
Mixed
hearing loss
They
refer to cases of conductive and sensory loss, so there are problems both
in the outer or middle ear and the inner. This type of loss can also result
from damage of the heart of the central nervous system, either on the
tracks to the brain or the brain itself.
Social
consequences
If
deafness is especially acute it can greatly affect the way the deaf person
is related to its human environment. A serious limitation in their ability
to find a way of communication by the ear canal, ie the spoken language
is the consequence. However, the way they understand the consequences
of this failure can vary considerably so that there are two fundamental
perspectives on how to understand deafness.
Pedagogical
Definition of Deafness
Deafness
can be divided into two types: the pre-lingual and post-lingual, depending
on whether they occurred before or after acquiring the abstract conception
of oral language in the brain structures (usually around 3 years of age).
However, people who are deaf from an early age naturally express themselves
with a sign language (LINK ALLA PAGINA DEI SEGNI LINGUA), the disappearance
of the ear canal as a means of human communication leaving only the visual
channel available.
The pre-lingual deafness is less common, and understanding of syntactic
structures of spoken language affects the difficulty of their pronunciation.
For the correct understanding of different shapes of prose or verse in
oral language such as irony, especially those who are captured by a modulation
of the voice tone, they are unable to understand. However, the vast majority
of these problems can be overcome with a bilingual education (native language
spoken and signed) from an early age.
The most common is post-lingual deafness and problems are similar in pre-lingual
deafness. With the difference that the person has already acquired the
abstract conception of oral language but, depending on age, tends to dominate
the use of sign language.
Social
anthropology of deafness
Recent
studies (from the work of William Stokoe in 1960) proposed to address
the deafness from an anthropological viewpoint. A group of deaf people
who communicate among themselves through a sign language can be considered
a minority language community, with a distinctive culture. The literature
often makes the distinction between Deaf with a capital letter to refer
to the anthropological and clinically defined deafness.
Depending on the case a deaf person can usually develop an idiosyncrasy
with people who communicate through the visual channel, ie with sign language
(SL).
It is considered as a community with distinct cultural and social conditions,
a Deaf Community. The social link between the deaf signers is usually
very strong due mainly to social isolation caused by the low awareness
of their common problems or lifestyle and poor social relationships because
they cannot hear spoken language.
In fact this group defines themselves as deaf signers and generally classify
their social environment among listeners (which may be some signers who
can hear) and to the rest of deaf people who, depending on the country
may also be part of the Deaf Community. Among the Deaf also deaf signers
differ from deaf Oralists, ie those who do not habitually use sign language
or use a bimodal communication (lexicon of sign language with grammatical
structure of a language spoken). Finally, the deaf can be implemented,
ie have a cochlear implant instead of a headset so they can be signers
or oralists.
Deaf Oralists, ie those deaf people who have received intensive rehabilitation
of oral language in its infancy and not using a sign language as a lingua
franca (usually as a result of prohibition by teachers) tend to adopt
an attitude of respect to their social invisibility, sometimes do not
even recognize it as such (using other definitions as hearing impaired,
half listener, etc ...). This group is also often associated as people
who are deaf signers especially those who cannot properly speak a spoken
language in the grammatical aspect.
This last definition of deaf-mutism moreover is considered pejorative
by the deaf signers believing in "talk" (visual channel in sign
language). They consider high illiteracy of spoken language among deaf
people has no connection with the dumbness, but a failure of the oral
method in the education system in their childhood and youth. In fact,
to call a person "deaf" to a non hearing person who does not
to speak spoken language correctly is just like calling a person who cannot
spell correctly "crippled", or "blind and crippled"
for the lack of reading and writing. As well the "deaf mutism"
would apply only to those who suffer from deafness and also are unable
to generate human sounds by the absence or damage of the vocal cord. They
are mutually independent aspects.
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Sign
language is the natural language of deaf people, through which they
can establish a channel of information for a relationship with their
social environment.
While oral language communication is set for hearing people, sign
language is for a visual and spatial channel. It has its own grammatical
structure which is characterized by the following parameters: the
configuration of one or two hands, their movements, their orientations,
their spatial location, and of non-manual (lip movements, which
can be verbal and oral -, facial, lingual, etc.).
Although sign language is natural among deaf people, their origin
is as old as spoken language in humanity, and has also been used
by communities of listeners. In fact, Native Americans of the Great
Plains region of North America used a sign language to be understood
between tribes speaking different languages and are still using
it today.
Despite this there are documents on sign language from before the
eighteenth century.
Linguistics
The
same works for spoken language: there are many diferent languages
and there is no universal language, so there are aswell several
sign languages in the world located regionally. There are at least
fifty almost mutually intelligible languages and numerous dialects,
some of which coexist within the same city.
In addition, an International Sign System (SSI), which can be considered
as a communication system consisting of proper signs, iconic signs
consensus of different languages ...
In
linguistic terms, sign language can be as rich and complex as any
spoken language despite the widespread misconception that they are
"artificial languages". Linguistics has studied various
sign languages and found that they have all the components necessary
to qualify as a natural language.
Sign languages are not simple mimicry, neither are any visual reproductions
simplified versions of any spoken language. They have a rich and
complex grammar. Sign languages as well as oral languages are organized
by elementary units without meaning.
Sign language uses the manual alphabet or dactylological alphabet
usually for personal names, although this is only one of many tools
we have.
In
general sign languages are independent of oral languages and follow
their own line of development. An area that has diferent spoken
languages may have the same sign language such as Canada, the USA
and Mexico, where American Sign Language coexists with oral languages
English, Spanish, and French.
Further evidence of the separation of the spoken languages of sign
languages is the fact that they operate through the visual medium.
Hearing the spoken language is consequently linear. You can only
give or receive a sound at once while sign language is. Consequently,
information can flow through several "channels" and be
expressed simultaneously.
The manual alphabet
In
deaf communities almost everyone uses a set of signs to represent
the letters of the alphabet to write the language of the country.
This is called the manual alphabet. In the speaking countries which
use the Latin alphabet Deaf communities use the same manual alphabet,
common to all countries (except for the shape of some letters).
In England they use a bimanual alphabet.
In countries not using the Latin alphabet (Hebrew alphabets, Arabic,
amhaárico, etc.) There are other forms of representation
between Deaf communities.
The same applies to countries that use non-alphabetic writing systems
(such as Japan, China, etc.)..
The
origin of the manual alphabet
This
common manual alphabet has its origins (oldest known source is a
sheet published in Madrid 1593 by a Spanish Franciscan monk named
Melchor de Yebra) in San Buenaventura (1221-1274).
Another contemporary Spanish monk Pedro Ponce de Leon (1500-1584)
had used the same alphabet to educate several deaf children. The
students from Ponce de Leon were all rich heirs of noble families
and he was famous at this time because the religious education provided
was highly cultivated and his students were able to read and write
in several languages. Ponce always kept their methods a secret.
He only seems to have revealed it to Ramirez de Carrion, another
monk who went educating deaf children from the Spanish nobility
after the death of Ponce.
The spreading of the manual alphabet was acomplished with a book
published years later by another Spanish, Juan Pablo Bonet. Title:
Reduction of literature and the art to teach the dumb to speak (published
in Madrid in 1620). Bonet was secretary of the Velasco family who
had already worked for Ponce and Ramirez as teachers. That allowed
him to observe closely the work done by Ramirez. Bonet later published
it as his work without mentioning the two monks.
In modern terms, the efforts made by Bonet is known as plagiarism
(see Günther 1996:112). However, thanks to Bonet there exists
a document that recorded this work for history. Bonet's book was
very popular and was translated in the nineteenth Century into many
other European languages. Hence the common form of the manual alphabets
in countries that use the Latin alphabet.
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