THE d/D DISTINCTION

Related to the recognition of increasing diversity in deaf worlds, a number of researchers are moving away from the practice of using the term “Deaf” for signing deaf people and “deaf” for non-signing deaf people, instead preferring to use only “deaf”.

• There are

multiple problems with the capitalization of “deaf”, because “small d” (deaf) has come to mean “deaf people who do not sign and who affirm medicalized deafness and wear hearing aids” rather than just biologically deaf (as in not being able to hear). The d/Deaf distinction creates or perpetuates a dichotomy between deaf and Deaf people (even when trying to be inclusive by writing “d/Deaf”), and it has caused practices and experiences of exclusion. This dichotomy is, in fact, an oversimplification of what is an increasingly complex set of identities and language practices,and the multiple positionalities / multimodal language use shown is impossible to represent with a simplified binary.

These problems also are noted by Woodward, who originally used the d/D distinction in 1975 (Woodward 1975) and who points out that many Deaf Studies scholars, including Padden and Humphries in their influential work (1988), have been mis-citing him (Woodward & Horejes 2016). Woodward and Horejes (2016) state that “a rigid taxonomy of deaf/Deaf is dangerous, colonizing, ethnocentric, and reinforces tautological and spiral debates with no positive constructions to the understanding of what it means to be deaf/Deaf. It starts with the misunderstanding of the origins of deaf/Deaf and why this distinction was originally made.” They point out that the distinction originally was made to emphasize that there is a sociocultural experience of being deaf, and that “deaf” was not meant to be connected to the “medical model” (which was Padden & Humphries’ [1988] interpretation), being “oral,” or as existing in opposition to “Deaf”: Indeed, people could be Deaf and deaf at the same time. Woodward and Horejes (2016) deplore that “The notion of d/D has become an ideological battlefield that further creates rigid and static notions of what being deaf means.”

Using “Deaf” is anachronistic when writing about deaf history and ethnocentric when applying it outside the Anglo-Saxon western context. As explained earlier, the use of “Deaf” was initiated in the early years of Deaf Studies, within a certain political and academic landscape that has changed and evolved considerably since then. Capitalizing groups and nationalities (such as”Italian”) is customary in the English language; but the capital “D” makes little sense in many other languages. It is also paternalistic, obscuring, and imposing: the capitalized “Deaf” is often used to describe the self-affirmation and pride of a group. But a deaf person who signs is not necessarily thinking actively about these issues. The “label” deaf people as Deaf, if these deaf people do not label themselves as such.There have been other suggestions for writing conventions, none of which has really gained ground: D/deaf (Eckert 2010), DeaF (McIlroy & Storbeck 2010), DEAF (Gulliver 2009), and DDBDDHH (Ruiz et al.2015). In a research context, I believe that complex labels are not helpful or transparent and that a single inclusive term might be more beneficial. Senghas (2016) suggests not using terms/capitalizations that need to be seen in print, given that they are hard to use during spoken or signed discussion. Other concepts that have been used are those of Sign Language Peoples (SLPs) (Ladd, Batterbury & Gulliver2007) and the Finnish term viittomakielinen (sign language person)(Jokinen 2001); but these are political and identity concepts respectively, rather than writing conventions, and there is discussion about whether and how these concepts include hearing people who sign.

If we hold that the d/Deaf dichotomy should cease being used within the community at large and within academic publications, we need to find a more inclusive term with more expansive possibilities.

Is the way forward to use “Deaf” for every deaf person, or is it to use”deaf” for everyone (cf. most chapters in this book)? Many authors have used “deaf” for individuals and “Deaf” for sociocultural entities like “Deaf community” and/or established theoretical concepts, such as “Deaf culture” (e.g., Haualand 2012). In this case (which we for themost part have adopted in this introduction), “deaf” does not mean”oral/medical” but rather biologically/corporally deaf. 

Thus, in this project, I define “Deaf” as a term describing all kinds of deaf persons, including those who are hard of hearing. Yet, I want to emphasize that we acknowledge that there are benefits and values connected to capitalizing “Deaf”