The term was introduced by Bauman and Murray in a 2009 article “Reframing: From Hearing Loss to Deaf Gain” and further elaborated in a 2014 book “Deaf gain – raising the stakes for human diversity”. It describes a sociological concept in approaching the Deaf community which emphasises their linguistic and cultural value within the broader community, as opposed to an outdated medical approach focused on repairing their impairment, with a chief aim of restoring full hearing capabilities.
In this Masterclass the lecturer Dorijana Kavčić will illustrate the current position of the Deaf community in Croatia and beyond. She will outline the fundamentals of interaction between the Deaf minority and hearing majority, as well as define key stakeholder roles in this interaction, i.e. the Deaf, the hearing and the interpreters. The matter will be presented from a sociological, linguistic and cultural point of view. The lecturer will elaborate on the uni-directional nature of current Deaf-hearing interaction, i.e. how meaning moves mostly from the hearing majority towards the Deaf minority, and will further illustrate how emphasising the importance of original utterances as opposed to interpreted meanings, art and artistic work can enable greater bi-directional contribution to the Deaf-hearing interaction.
About the lecturer
Dorijana Kavčić is a linguist working on the description of Croatian Sign Language (HZJ), with a special interest in Sign Language linguistics. She is a PhD student at the Department of linguistics, in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb, and is a permanently employed HZJ interpreter. Being a CODA (child of Deaf adults), social scientist and interpreter, she is personally well aware of deep insufficiencies in literature related to the language and culture of the Deaf, as well as in education and educational materials made for interpreters, and in the overall acknowledgment of Deaf culture’s contribution to general society. She is determined to improve the linguistic status of HZJ and the overall profession of HZJ interpreters.
