The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (April 2023) |
Deaf culture is 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. 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.[1] Carl G. Croneberg was among the first to discuss analogies between Deaf and hearing cultures in his appendices C and D of the 1965 Dictionary of American Sign Language.[2]