[Linganth] Th/Nov18/SF: Deaf Studies' critical challenge to social theory

[Frank Bechter]

Dear linganthers,

As Leila Monaghan recently mentioned, on Thursday the 18th, our SLA
double-panel, "Deaf Studies' critical challenge to social theory," will be
held in San Francisco at the Canterbury Hotel (750 Sutter Street, near
Union Square), along with many other sessions and meetings happening there
from Thursday through Sunday.  Many thanks to Katie Anderson-Levitt and
Yuri Wellington of the CAE for making this possible, and to Kerim Friedman
for pointing us in the right direction.  Our session will pursue a "think
tank" format to the degree possible, with Lakshmi Fjord facilitating
discussion of our 11 papers from 10am to approximately 2:30 or 3:00.  After
that, discussion of several larger issues in the development of Deaf
Studies as a critical discourse will take place for the rest of the
afternoon.  The abstract to the session and a list of presenters is
below.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me
(fbechter at uchicago.edu) or my co-organizer Peter Graif
(pjgraif at uchicago.edu).  We hope to see you there -- as audience input will
be very welcome.

SESSION ABSTRACT:

In the past two decades, anthropological study of deaf signers has shown
that primary categories of social description -- language, culture,
"ethnicity," identity -- can be applied to the deaf.  In this way, and
against a long history of systematic disenfranchisement of deaf signers,
the categories of social and linguistic theory are thus employed to
understand deaf signers as a more-or-less "normal" linguistic minority,
having their own community organizations, folklore, literary forms,
etiquette, internal sociolinguistic variation, and even typical forms of
gender, race and class bias.  The deaf cultural community is thus advanced
as an ethnographic domain wherein already-constituted insights of social
and linguistic theory can be evidenced, albeit with minor adjustments to
account for signing versus speaking.  In this way, the study of the deaf
not only legitimates the deaf along particular theoretical dimensions, but,
indeed, functions to legitimate these theoretical dimensions themselves,
with the unstated corollary that any aspect of deaf social life which
violates precepts of these scholarly discourses will be quietly sidelined.

But what if heretofore sidelined aspects of deaf life are, in fact, what is
most fundamental to the deaf, and to any understanding of them? Indeed,
what are the precepts at issue?  Thus, for example, the study of the deaf
has focused on deaf families, where cultural transmission is in sympathy
with a classic perspective -- and yet, deaf signers come overwhelmingly
from non-deaf families.  Linguists, meanwhile, have argued for an SVO
structure to ASL, but the highest aesthetic form of signing ("ASL
storytelling") often contains no SVO constructions, nor, indeed, any linear
syntax whatsoever.

This panel takes the empirical facts of deaf signing populations (in the US
and elsewhere) as its starting points, granting from the outset the
"cultural" status of deaf signing communities, and the "linguistic" status
of deaf signing systems, as essentially obvious -- not in need of
legitimization, but rather standing as daunting invitations to better
theorization of culture and language.  The goal, on the one hand, is to
better understand the deaf community and its forms.  At the same time,
however, we maintain that this is not possible in the absence of real
theoretical innovation.  Thus, though emerging through consideration of
deaf cases, the innovations we propose are advanced as valuable to, or even
fundamental to, a range of ethnographic contexts and critical discourses.

All panelists' research involves extensive interaction with deaf signers,
and four panelists are themselves deaf scholars.  (The session will be
fully accessible in English and ASL.)  Given its critical aims, where Deaf
Studies itself stands under scrutiny, it is imperative that such a session
proceed in maximal dialogue with this emerging subfield, though emphasizing
anthropological methods and aims.

1) Frank Bechter, University of Chicago
2) Hilde Haualand, Fafo Research Institute, Norway
3) Bryan Eldredge PhD, Utah Valley State College
4) Kirsten Harmon PhD, Gallaudet University
5) Theresa Smith PhD, ASLIS
6) Russell Rosen PhD, Columbia
7) Leila Monaghan PhD, Indiana University, Bloomington
8) Erich Fox Tree PhD, Stanford University
9) Angela Nonaka, UCLA
10) Erika Hoffman, University of Michigan
11) Peter Graif, University of Chicago
12) Lakshmi Fjord, UC Berkeley