Deafness in France

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Deafness in France is a topic that is relevant to individuality, education, and community. France has a long-running history of involvement with DHH (Deaf or Hard of Hearing) individuals, especially during World War II. There were reportedly about 10,000,000 hearing impaired people in France (16.1% of the population) as of 2014, of whom about 360,000 (0.6% of the population) had "very serious or total" functional limitations, meaning unable to hear a conversation with multiple people and identifying as deaf or hard of hearing. [1] While FSL (French Sign Language) is the main signed language in France, ASL (American Sign Language) is studied and used commonly, and French Cued Speech, a mixture of spoken French and FSL, is also not uncommon. [2]

Contents

Culture

DHH individuals in France may take steps in early and mid-life to be integrated into hearing society. One of the most common practices are cochlear implants, which are devices that are affixed to the structures of the ear in charge of hearing, storing and subsequently transmitting sounds to the auditory nerve. This allows certain damages in the flow of hearing to be bypassed. [3] Many children who are born in France are actually screened for deafness within the first week of their lives, and many doctors will immediately launch into the process of implementing a cochlear implant if deafness is found to be the case. There are many controversies surrounding this topic, and a great deal of parents, both hearing and non-hearing, agree that this may be too early. While France is ahead of many other regions across the world and known as one of the earliest identifiers of DHH children, many say that these steps are taken too early, and that these processes may alienate the children. Such topics are of active debate. [4] A similar topic of alienation, speech therapy is commonplace, in which DHH individuals are trained to speak and use their voice. This gives a strong sense of abnormality to many involved, but it is carried out because it does help ease of function for many DHH individuals outside of DHH communities, or in predominantly non-signing communities. [4]

There are also some communities and structures in place to prevent the alienation of DHH individuals and move more toward celebrating it. Small communities of DHH individuals are informally but frequently formed, close-knit circles drawn together in which things like cochlear implants and speech therapy is not needed. [4] There are also many associations that represent the concerns and needs of DHH individuals, and many that celebrate them. To name a few, performances and classes at the IVT theater that bring DHH people together in a creative and educational manner, the political endeavors of FNSF to make the needs of DHH individuals more heard and met, and the bi-yearly Festival Clin d'Oeil. This festival is a celebration of arts, parties, movies, and conversation, entirely signed and geared toward DHH individuals. [5] All of these instances help form a community around deafness, and there are many who shy away from the societally-enforced conformist practices in favor of this independent community and its various subsets across the DHH spectrum.

Education

Since 1989, laws in France have standardized a secondary language in primary education to pair with French. This is a massive obstacle for DHH students, as neither their primary or secondary languages are permitted to be a sign language of any sort, as is proper with similar policies in other countries. Another law was passed in 2005, however, that was geared as an equal rights policy, but under its purview was the integration of DHH students into mainstream school, losing a good deal of the support that was available to them. This leaves many DHH students in environments where the staff is simply not trained or funded sufficiently to teach them effectively, and these students who find themselves in this situation tend to fall behind; 99.6% DHH students take English as their first foreign language, and the majority who learn a second foreign language generally choose French Sign Language, as it is the earliest time that they can take the language native to them. This all adds up to show that DHH students essentially have to take two foreign language classes before they can take their native language, and we see many who withdraw from their secondary language courses and put themselves behind academically simply to master French, a strategy popularized by a 2003 study by Ivani Fuselier‐Souza. There is also a technique known as French cued speech, also known as signed French, which is a mixture of FSL and spoken French which is mean to teach classes of hearing and non-hearing students simultaneously, but it takes training to execute, and thus is also limited by the aforementioned lack of training and/or funding [2]

There are certainly schools geared specifically toward DHH students, but not all DHH children have the opportunity to participate, so there are many language-deficient DHH individuals who have gone through their education as normal and simply not been given the tools to succeed. A study published in 2020 by Daniel Daigle, Rachel Berthiaume, Agnès Costerg and Anne Plisson on the spelling errors of DHH French students showed that while the number of spelling errors did not vary much, the severity of each spelling error ran much deeper due to more fundamental misunderstandings of their language, and as a result was significantly harder to read or understand. [6]

History

In 1755, a French priest by the name of Abbe Charles-Michel de L'Épée opened a school for the deaf upon his own funding, a school that produced what is generally thought of as the first completed sign language with direct routes to a modern sign language. [7] Since then, FSL has been one of the forerunning sign languages in the world, with a great deal of historical significance put behind it. It was around this time as well that the way in which DHH individuals were looked after was changed; with the advent of sign language, those who cared for DHH people shifted primarily from educators toward doctors. With new forms of communication, many diseases and injuries began to be found quickly that were much harder to diagnose before. [8] The split of care between doctors and educators has leveled out over time to be a bit more even, but there are still issues with the rate of identification of deadly diseases and infections, particularly cancer, with the average stage of identification being roughly a full stage later than normal identifications. [9]

A particularly tense time in deaf history was during World War II, during which many deaf people were killed as a way of culling the population under Nazi orders. France was one of the places that these cruel practices made their way to and, while no specific numbers are historically available, the effect felt was not insignificant. [10] There were also conflicts in France itself, where many deaf people who applied to work in factories to aid the war effort, but were turned away for unlawful reasons. In the wake of this, letters were written and published in popular newspapers like the Gazette, and policies that made it illegal to turn away deaf workers were put into place, but the policies only affected French males who were deaf due to other policies in place. [10] In 1942, the French prime minister Pierre Laval Germany of prisoner to worker exchange.[ clarification needed ] For every three French workers that he sent to Germany, a prisoner of war would be freed and released back to France. Primarily deaf workers were sent, however, and many ended up becoming prisoners of war themselves, mainly those who could not learn quickly to interpret spoken German, which were the majority. [10] Perhaps as a result of the active ways that DHH individuals made themselves prevalent and heard in wartime France, more deaf characters began to appear in French media, ultimately leading to a flourishing of deaf arts, as well as the fight for individuality. [10]

Organizations

FNSF

The FNSF (Fédération Nationale des Sourds de France, National Federation of Deafness in France) is a federation involved in 89 different organizations, comprising a wide array of topics in which the stances of the DHH community are underrepresented. This federation tries to make the rights and views of DHH individuals in France more considered, and even helps oversee some legal processes. This federation is involved in meetings with the Ministries of National Education, Social Affairs, the National Consultative Committee for People with Disabilities, the High Authority of Health, the National Institute of Prevention for Education and Health, the National Monuments Center, and the Superior Audiovisual Council, just to name a few. The predominant values of the federation are culture, unity, participation, self-representation, consistency, patrimony and solidarity. These are the values that are upheld in its decisions, and they are also the values placed in the center of education in the camps that it hosts across Europe to facilitate education of FSL in underprivileged DHH children. [11] It is a member of the European Union of the Deaf and the World Federation of the Deaf.

IVT

IVT (International Visual Theater) is an organization based in Paris, where they have been stationed since 1981. The operation is run by Emmanuelle Laborit and Jennifer Lesage-David, who use the theater as an educational and community-building center for individuals in the DHH community. Many come to the theater to take classes, participate in performances, and be in a setting where FSL is the standard. Dozens of shows are run each year, and hundreds of individuals attend classes across the same course of time. Classes regarding language, culture, various arts and more are held within the building, but also online, as the theater contributes as broadly as it can to the educational facilitation of DHH people in France. [12]

Deafi

DEAFI, founded in 2009, is a French communication organization that helps the state of the deaf community by improving the state of communication. To make education and communication broader, the company specializes in communication and connections, known for the webcams especially that aid in the remote use of FSL. The company assists in online communication, especially during the COVID-19 outbreak, but its overall goal is to give its clients the tools to move away from it and achieve independence. The company specializes further in connecting its clients with specialized education and job opportunities, as such things can better facilitate independence for the future. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cochlear implant</span> Prosthesis

A cochlear implant (CI) is a surgically implanted neuroprosthesis that provides a person who has moderate-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss with sound perception. With the help of therapy, cochlear implants may allow for improved speech understanding in both quiet and noisy environments. A CI bypasses acoustic hearing by direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. Through everyday listening and auditory training, cochlear implants allow both children and adults to learn to interpret those signals as speech and sound.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deaf culture</span> Culture of deaf persons

Deaf culture is the set of social beliefs, behaviors, art, literary traditions, history, values, and shared institutions of communities that are influenced by deafness and which use sign languages as the main means of communication. When used as a cultural label especially within the culture, the word deaf is often written with a capital D and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. When used as a label for the audiological condition, it is written with a lower case d. Carl G. Croneberg coined the term "Deaf Culture" and he was the first to discuss analogies between Deaf and hearing cultures in his appendices C/D of the 1965 Dictionary of American Sign Language.

Oralism is the education of deaf students through oral language by using lip reading, speech, and mimicking the mouth shapes and breathing patterns of speech. Oralism came into popular use in the United States around the late 1860s. In 1867, the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, was the first school to start teaching in this manner. Oralism and its contrast, manualism, manifest differently in deaf education and are a source of controversy for involved communities. Oralism should not be confused with Listening and Spoken Language, a technique for teaching deaf children that emphasizes the child's perception of auditory signals from hearing aids or cochlear implants.

Audism as described by deaf activists is a form of discrimination directed against deaf people, which may include those diagnosed as deaf from birth, or otherwise. Tom L. Humphries coined the term in his doctoral dissertation in 1975, but it did not start to catch on until Harlan Lane used it in his writing. Humphries originally applied audism to individual attitudes and practices; whereas Lane broadened the term to include oppression of deaf people.

Manually coded languages (MCLs) are a family of gestural communication methods which include gestural spelling as well as constructed languages which directly interpolate the grammar and syntax of oral languages in a gestural-visual form—that is, signed versions of oral languages. Unlike the sign languages that have evolved naturally in deaf communities, these manual codes are the conscious invention of deaf and hearing educators, and as such lack the distinct spatial structures present in native deaf sign languages. MCLs mostly follow the grammar of the oral language—or, more precisely, of the written form of the oral language that they interpolate. They have been mainly used in deaf education in an effort to "represent English on the hands" and by sign language interpreters in K-12 schools, although they have had some influence on deaf sign languages where their implementation was widespread.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deaf education</span> Education of the deaf and hard of hearing

Deaf education is the education of students with any degree of hearing loss or deafness. This may involve, but does not always, individually-planned, systematically-monitored teaching methods, adaptive materials, accessible settings, and other interventions designed to help students achieve a higher level of self-sufficiency and success in the school and community than they would achieve with a typical classroom education. There are different language modalities used in educational setting where students get varied communication methods. A number of countries focus on training teachers to teach deaf students with a variety of approaches and have organizations to aid deaf students.

The deaf community over time has worked to improve the educational system for those who are deaf and hard of hearing. The history of deaf education dates back to Ancient Egypt where the deaf were respected and revered. In contrast, those who were deaf in Ancient Greece were considered a burden to society and put to death. The educational aspects of the deaf community has evolved tremendously and still continues to grow as the science of linguistics, educational research, new technologies, and laws, on local, national, and international levels are steadily being introduced. Strategies, however, remain controversial.

Language acquisition is a natural process in which infants and children develop proficiency in the first language or languages that they are exposed to. The process of language acquisition is varied among deaf children. Deaf children born to deaf parents are typically exposed to a sign language at birth and their language acquisition follows a typical developmental timeline. However, at least 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents who use a spoken language at home. Hearing loss prevents many deaf children from hearing spoken language to the degree necessary for language acquisition. For many deaf children, language acquisition is delayed until the time that they are exposed to a sign language or until they begin using amplification devices such as hearing aids or cochlear implants. Deaf children who experience delayed language acquisition, sometimes called language deprivation, are at risk for lower language and cognitive outcomes. However, profoundly deaf children who receive cochlear implants and auditory habilitation early in life often achieve expressive and receptive language skills within the norms of their hearing peers; age at implantation is strongly and positively correlated with speech recognition ability. Early access to language through signed language or technology have both been shown to prepare children who are deaf to achieve fluency in literacy skills.

Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written with a lower case d. It later came to be used in a cultural context to refer to those who primarily communicate through sign language regardless of hearing ability, often capitalized as Deaf and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. The two definitions overlap but are not identical, as hearing loss includes cases that are not severe enough to impact spoken language comprehension, while cultural Deafness includes hearing people who use sign language, such as children of deaf adults.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deaf rights movement</span>

The Deaf rights movement encompasses a series of social movements within the disability rights and cultural diversity movements that encourages deaf and hard of hearing to push society to adopt a position of equal respect for them. Acknowledging that those who were Deaf or hard of hearing had rights to obtain the same things as those hearing lead this movement. Establishing an educational system to teach those with Deafness was one of the first accomplishments of this movement. Sign language, as well as cochlear implants, has also had an extensive impact on the Deaf community. These have all been aspects that have paved the way for those with Deafness, which began with the Deaf Rights movement.

The deaf community in Australia is a diverse cultural and linguistic minority group. Deaf communities have many distinctive cultural characteristics, some of which are shared across many different countries. These characteristics include language, values and behaviours. The Australian deaf community relies primarily on Australian Sign Language, or Auslan. Those in the Australian deaf community experience some parts of life differently than those in the broader hearing world, such as access to education and health care.

Treatment depends on the specific cause if known as well as the extent, type, and configuration of the hearing loss. Most hearing loss results from age and noise, is progressive, and irreversible. There are currently no approved or recommended treatments to restore hearing; it is commonly managed through using hearing aids. A few specific types of hearing loss are amenable to surgical treatment. In other cases, treatment involves addressing underlying pathologies, but any hearing loss incurred may be permanent.

Deafness in Portugal involves several elements such as the history, education, community, and medical treatment that must be understood to grasp the experiences of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals in this region. Currently there are 60,000 people in Portugal that are deaf sign language users. Among that number are 100 working sign language interpreters. Currently, the form of sign language used in Portugal is Portuguese Sign Language. In Portugal, the cities Lisbon and Porto have the largest deaf populations.

In Ireland, 8% of adults are affected by deafness or severe hearing loss. In other words, 300,000 Irish require supports due to their hearing loss.


Deafness in Poland refers to the Deaf communities in Poland and education around their culture and language. Poland has a recorded history of DHH people, dating back to 1817. About 15.1% of Polish people in Poland say they have hearing loss. Polski Język Migowy is the main signed language in Poland.

According to The Deaf Unit Cairo, there are approximately 1.2 million deaf and hard of hearing individuals in Egypt aged five and older. Deafness can be detected in certain cases at birth or throughout childhood in terms of communication delays and detecting language deprivation. The primary language used amongst the deaf population in Egypt is Egyptian Sign Language (ESL) and is widely used throughout the community in many environments such as schools, deaf organizations, etc. This article focuses on the many different aspects of Egyptian life and the impacts it has on the deaf community.

In Benin, deafness affects 12,500 people out of their total population of 10 million. Since the late 1900s, there has been a growing emergence of resources, recognition, and support for the deaf people in Benin. The deaf community uses American Sign Language (ASL), Langue des Signes de l'Afrique Francophone (LSAF), and Langue des signes du Bénin. The type of sign and how many people use each remain undocumented. However, in 1994, one of the first LSAF dictionaries was published in Benin.

Deafness in Thailand refers to the population and culture of Deaf Hard of Hearing people in Thailand. Deafness in Thailand includes language emergence, organizations, healthcare, employment, schooling, and civil rights.

Out of nearly 59 million people in Italy, about 3.5 million Italians have some form of hearing loss. Among them, around 70,000 people are severely deaf. The European Union for the Deaf reports that the majority of the deaf people in Italy use Italian Sign Language (LIS). LIS has been an official sign language in Italy since 2021. Italy, among other countries, ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and is slowly improving conditions for deaf humans in Italy. Many major organizations in Italy fight for deaf rights and spread awareness to the Italian National Agency for the protection and assistance of the Deaf and Associated Italian Families for the Defense of the Rights of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Individuals (FIADDA). Newborns in Italy also receive universal hearing screenings. Education in Italy is directed towards oralism, although sign language is also used. LIS is a stable language and is used by approximately 40,000 users in Italy.

The Filipino Sign Language (FSL) is the official language of education for deaf Filipinos, which number around 121,000 as of 2000.

References

  1. ↑ Haeusler, Laurence; De Laval, Thibaud; Millot, Charlotte. "Étude quantitative sur le handicap auditif à partir de l'enquête « Handicap-Santé »" (PDF). Retrieved 30 August 2023.
  2. 1 2 Bedoin, D. (May 2011). "English teachers of deaf and hard‐of‐hearing students in French schools: needs, barriers and strategies". European Journal of Special Needs Education. 26 (2): 159–175. doi:10.1080/08856257.2011.563605. S2CID   144226563.
  3. ↑ "Cochlear implants - Mayo Clinic". www.mayoclinic.org. Retrieved 2021-10-15.
  4. 1 2 3 Frogner, Jenny (2012). The world of the deaf : how deaf people in France create a community around deafness and challenge conceptions of normality (Thesis). hdl: 10852/16268 .
  5. ↑ "Festival Clin d'Oeil 2022". www.clin-doeil.eu. Retrieved 2021-10-15.
  6. ↑ Daigle, Daniel; Berthiaume, Rachel; Costerg, Agnès; Plisson, Anne (30 May 2020). "What Do Spelling Errors Tell Us about Deaf Learners of French?". The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. 25 (3): 365–376. doi: 10.1093/deafed/enz049 . PMID   31993627.
  7. ↑ Sumangal, B. (2001-11-10). "How did Sign Language Originate?". Pitara Kids Network. Retrieved 2021-10-15.
  8. ↑ Arnaud, S. (1 May 2015). "Fashioning a Role for Medicine: Alexandre-Louis-Paul Blanchet and the Care of the Deaf in Mid-nineteenth-century France". Social History of Medicine. 28 (2): 288–307. doi:10.1093/shm/hku086.
  9. ↑ Druel, Vladimir; Hayet, Hélène; Esman, Laetitia; Clavel, Marie; Rougé Bugat, Marie-Eve (December 2018). "Assessment of cancers' diagnostic stage in a Deaf community - survey about 4363 Deaf patients recorded in French units". BMC Cancer. 18 (1): 93. doi: 10.1186/s12885-017-3972-3 . PMC   5781319 . PMID   29361910.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Kitchen, Ruth (November 2017). "The Fight for Deaf Rights in Wartime France". Essays in French Literature and Culture. No. 54. pp. 161–180, 182–183. ProQuest   1989487842.
  11. ↑ "Accueil". FNSF - Fédération Nationale des Sourds de France (in French). Retrieved 2021-09-28.[ non-primary source needed ][ vague ]
  12. ↑ "Accueil | IVT". ivt.fr. Retrieved 2021-09-28.
  13. ↑ Pirolli, Bryan. "Paris-based entrepreneurs to make deaf community heard". ZDNet. Retrieved 2021-09-28.
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