The perspective that deaf people should be primarily regarded as a cultural and language minority group rather than as individuals with an audiological disability is gathering support among educators, linguists, and researchers involved in the education of deaf people. Minority empowerment movements across America – and American society's increased awareness of its own diversity – have brought a supportive context to the efforts of deaf people to have American Sign Language (ASL), the language of their community, recognized in planning educational policies and curricula. This book considers in depth the notion that deaf people are members of a bilingual-bicultural minority group in America, whose experiences often overlap with the experiences of hearing minority group members but at other times are unique. It is hoped that this information will be useful in the future development of sociocultural models for understanding the life experiences of deaf people and in designing policies and curricula for the education of deaf students that take into account the cultural and language diversity of their experience. It is also hoped that this analysis will lead hearing society to a better understanding of the experiences of deaf people.

This book contains chapters written by deaf and hearing educators and researchers in the fields of the education of deaf people, Deaf culture, ASL linguistics, interpreter education, bilingualism, bilingual education, cognition, and sociology. The authors offer several different ways of understanding the cultural and language diversity of deaf people through their conceptual analyses, research, and experiential evidence.