Participation in a Global Hearing Culture: Hearing Mothers’ Translations of Their Childrens’ Deafworlds

Abstract

Learning a visual language gives hearing mothers the possibility of participating in their deaf children’s culture. Yet, mothers also grapple with the demands of an unmarked global hearing culture, especially as their children’s deafness becomes mediated by technology and medical intervention, under the guise of progress, social mobility, equity, and inclusion (Lane et al. 1996). Access to spoken English through technological aids supposedly ‘solves’ the perceived ‘problem’ of communication and cultural difference between mother and child. But what is at stake in this process of translation aided by new technologies? I take a critical discourse analytic approach to analyze videotaped interviews with six hearing mothers. Hearing mother interviewees displayed ambivalent shifts in footing, in particular, mode-switches, which, I argue, paralleled the ambiguous subject positions of their deaf children who they perceive as both deaf (without implants) and hearing (with implants). This study brings to light the complex role technology and ‘cochlear implant culture’ play in shaping an instrumentalized view of language with the objective of participating in local and global hearing culture.