deaf culture

Interview Questions

Questions about Deaf culture

  • Name, Age, Location, Education/Career
  • Do you use American Sign Language (ASL)? Would you consider yourself fluent? Is it your primary mode of communication? How many years have you been signing?
  • What is your involvement in the Deaf Community, if any?
  • How long have you been involved in the Deaf Community? And in what capacities?
  • How connected do you feel to the Deaf Community? Describe this connection and how it has changed/evolved.
  • Do you consider yourself part of the “hearing world” or “deaf world”? Both or neither? Why?

Questions about personhood (story)

  • Describe a typical day/week in your life.
  • What are your favorite hobbies? Activities? Sports?
  • Who is your role model and why?
  • What are 3 words friends would use to describe you? What are 3 words your family would use to describe you? What are 3 words you would use to describe yourself?
  • What something people underestimate about you? Why do you think that is the case?
  • If you were to write an autobiography, what would you title it? Why?

 

Note: Questions that include identifying information will be changed to protect identity. Depending on the interviews involvement in the Deaf community, the second set of questions may be altered to reflect their opinions of the Deaf community. For example, “what something people underestimate about you?” may be rephrased to a Deaf education teacher to say “What something people underestimate about your students? Do you think it is true? How to you and your students respond to that judgment?”

Posted on by Christina Oros

Research Journal: Cochlear Implants

As I watched the documentary, Sound and Fury, I began having more and more questions about the Deaf community and cochlear implants. Cochlear implants have been a contested issue in the Deaf world since they were introduced about 30 years ago. Members of the Deaf community see cochlear implants as an affront to their culture and community. As ASL users, they do not rely on speech or sound to communicate and they do not view deafness as something to be “cured.” For pre-lingually deaf (deafness before language learning occurs) children, the implant is most effective before age one or as young as six months. In this case, children are not deciding to get implanted but rather a parent is making that choices. Because they cannot decide for themselves, Deaf community fears that the CI affirms deafness as a disability rather than allowing deaf children to learn sign and develop a sense of Deaf culture and pride.

Since the CI was first invented, technology has improved vastly. The number electrodes used has increased allowing for better and more diverse reception of speech and sound. Cochlear implants have gotten smaller and easier to use. The CI works by bypassing the hair cells of the inner ear and directly stimulates the cochlea nerve with electric pulses. A microphone outside of the skull receives sound input and the processor must determine the frequency of the sound and how it is to be interpreted.

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When I studied this in several of my speech and audiology classes, we were told that speech through a cochlear implant does not sound like the speech a hearing person listens to. Some people describe it as robotic or electronic, but what does it really sound like? Thanks, YouTube for answering that question!

This video plays the speech stimulus given and how it is heard by a deaf individual through a cochlear implant.

Posted on by Christina Oros