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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 5:2 2000
© 2000 Oxford University Press

Empirical Articles

On Creating a Workable Signing Environment

Deaf and Hearing Perspectives

A. M. Young

University of Salford

J. Ackerman and J. G. Kyle

University of Bristol

This article studies teams of service providers in education and psychiatric services, in which a substantial number of both deaf and hearing people work together as colleagues. It focuses specifically on the challenges involved in cooperatively creating a signing work environment. Using a methodology that draws on the principles of ethnography, it identifies and explores the meaning constructions associated with signing at work, from deaf and hearing perspectives. Data were collected through interviews in three organizations all in the United Kingdom: two specialist psychiatric units for deaf adults and a school for deaf children. Forty-one informants participated (20 deaf, 21 hearing). Results show that from a deaf perspective, hearing people's use of sign language in their presence at work is closely associated with demonstrating personal respect, value, and confidence, and hearing colleagues' willingness to sign is more significant than their fluency. From a hearing perspective, results demonstrate that sign language use at work is closely associated with change, pressure, and the questioning of professional competence. The challenges involved in improving deaf/hearing relations are perceived from a deaf perspective as largely person-centered, and from a hearing perspective as primarily language-centered. The significance of organizational factors such as imbalances in power and status between deaf and hearing colleagues is explored in relation to the findings.

This work was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Correspondence should be sent to A. M. Young, School of Community, Health and Social Care, University of Salford, Allerton Annexe, Frederick Road, Salford M6 6PU, United Kingdom (e-mail: A.Young{at}salford.ac.uk ).

Received June 11, 1999; revised October 28, 1999; accepted October 29, 1999


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