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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education Advance Access originally published online on May 4, 2005
The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2005 10(3):291-310; doi:10.1093/deafed/eni030
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

Ethics and Deafness

Ethnicity, Ethics, and the Deaf-World

Harlan Lane

Northeastern University

This article is concerned with ethical aspects of the relations between language minorities using signed languages (called the Deaf-World) and the larger societies that engulf them. The article aims to show that such minorities have the properties of ethnic groups, and that an unsuitable construction of the Deaf-World as a disability group has led to programs of the majority that discourage Deaf children from acquiring the language and culture of the Deaf-World and that aim to reduce the number of Deaf births—programs that are unethical from an ethnic group perspective. Four reasons not to construe the Deaf-World as a disability group are advanced: Deaf people themselves do not believe they have a disability; the disability construction brings with it needless medical and surgical risks for the Deaf child; it also endangers the future of the Deaf-World; finally, the disability construction brings bad solutions to real problems because it is predicated on a misunderstanding.

A version of this article will appear in L. Komesaroff and M. Jokinen, Surgery on Deaf Children, Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.

All correspondence should be sent to Harlan Lane, Department of Psychology 125 NI, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115 (e-mail: Lane{at}neu.edu).

Received November 17, 2004; revised January 18, 2005; accepted February 11, 2005


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