page_title: Social impact of profound hearing loss
hierarchical_section_title: Social impact of profound hearing loss
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Zeichnung von R.A. Olea: sign language&#160;: friend, Farbstifte auf Tonpapier, 2008.Bemerkung: Die Zeichung zeigt einen Teil des Gebärdenzeichens für "Freund" in American Sign Language (ASL, 'Amerikanische Gebärdensprache'), das aus wechselseitigem "Verhaken" der Zeigefinger besteht.
context_page_description: People with extreme hearing loss may communicate through sign languages. Sign languages convey meaning through manual communication and body language instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns. This involves the simultaneous combination of hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to express a speaker's thoughts. "Sign languages are based on the idea that vision is the most useful tool a deaf person has to communicate and receive information".
  Deaf culture refers to a tight-knit cultural group of people whose primary language is signed, and who practice social and cultural norms which are distinct from those of the surrounding hearing community. This community does not automatically include all those who are clinically or legally deaf, nor does it exclude every hearing person. According to Baker and Padden, it includes any person or persons who "identifies him/herself as a member of the Deaf community, and other members accept that person as a part of the community," an example being children of deaf adults with normal hearing ability.
context_section_description: People with extreme hearing loss may communicate through sign languages.  Sign languages convey meaning through manual communication and body language instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns. This involves the simultaneous combination of hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to express a speaker's thoughts. "Sign languages are based on the idea that vision is the most useful tool a deaf person has to communicate and receive information".
  Deaf culture refers to a tight-knit cultural group of people whose primary language is signed, and who practice social and cultural norms which are distinct from those of the surrounding hearing community. This community does not automatically include all those who are clinically or legally deaf, nor does it exclude every hearing person. According to Baker and Padden, it includes any person or persons who "identifies him/herself as a member of the Deaf community, and other members accept that person as a part of the community," an example being children of deaf adults with normal hearing ability.  It includes 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.  Members of the Deaf community tend to view deafness as a difference in human experience rather than a disability or disease.  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.
caption: The sign language for "friend".
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