American Sign Language Culture

American Sign Language Final

Imagine this, you are at a restaurant with your all your family after a cousin graduates from high school. Everyone is happy about his new accomplishment laughing, telling jokes, and remembering embarrassing stories from when he was younger. You are sitting in your seat, watching everyone enjoy him or herself, but you do not really understand what is exactly going on. You are deaf, and unless the person speaking is looking right at you and signing, you have no idea what the person is saying. True, your family members could sign everything they say, yet not everyone in your family knows American Sign Language. You are in a foreign world whenever you are with you family because they are hearing while you are deaf.

Deafness affects roughly 28.8 Million Americans. Some were born Deaf, while others lost their hearing some time throughout their life. There is no one cause for Deafness. Causes range from genetics to premature birth to ear infections to car accidents. All of the Deaf that live in the United States are considered Americans by nature, so that creates a question. If the Deaf are Americans, what is Deaf Culture?

First, let us understand what a "culture" is. Is it the way we live, eat, walk or think? It is all of the above. A culture us not defined simply by one specific aspect. Culture is a variety of things that define a group of individuals apart from the rest of the world. The way Britain's live is very different from the way Pakistani's live, yet Deaf Americans live in America, so how is their culture any different from those