What discourse community am I researching? Hmmmm. Honestly,
I’m not super 100 percent sure I even know what a discourse community really is.
Every time I think I know what it is, I do a little more research, I confuse
myself. But so I need to double check
that. But the discourse community I would like to research, once I actually
find out if it actually is a discourse community, is the deaf community. I’m fascinated
by the deaf community because I have quite a few family members who are deaf
and I am very interesting in how they communicate with each other and anyone
else in general. Some of my deaf family members know sign language and the
others don’t. They can still communicate with each other though. I’ve noticed
that they read my lips to communicate with people. I found this out the hard
way when I tried to mouth a word instead of mumbling something under my breath
in front of my mom, she was not pleased. In society, it is socially acceptable to
make eye contact with someone when they are talking so deaf people can come off
as rude when they stare at their mouths.
I plan on
interview my family members who don’t know sign language vs the ones who do and
compare their experiences in this community. The cost to be in this community is
to be either to born into this community or join by accident, meaning you lose
your hearing.
There’s a
lot of things that my mom and family members do that I don’t really understand
but then if they run into another person who is deaf and they completely understand.
Now that I’m older I understand it more now, I had to be use context clues but
it really isn’t that difficult to understand their mannerisms. Of course,
anyone can learn sign language or read lips so that’s what this community kinda
different. It doesn’t have to be just deaf people, it can really be anyone who
just have to learn and adapt to their skills and mannerisms.
The deaf community is so interesting! I really want to learn sign language. It seems like a good idea since the research purpose is to see how they communicate, and this community definitely has unique ways. But are the deaf a part of like a support group where they all meet up every once in awhile? And then I wonder what their common public goal would be? My friends parents and much of his family are deaf, but he isn't. His first language was actually ASL and he had to go to school to learn English! I remember I asked him like how do they get phone calls then and about things we usually don't think about because we can hear. It's pretty interesting!
ReplyDelete--Victoria
I think this could be an interesting direction. The trick is to find a true deaf community, not just all deaf people, but an actual community of practice, a group of people who communicate together for some purpose. EF
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