The New Agora: Social Media as a Vector for Sign Language as a Language of Culture, Identity and Inclusion of the Deaf

Abstract

Sign Languages (SL) are necessary for the intellectual development of Deaf children. They are complete linguistic system used by the Deaf Culture for education, communication, creation and dissemination of knowledge. Arbitrarily forbidden for more than 100 years, the lack of SL artifacts is now a major problem the Deaf: there are few loci where they can interact in their own language (i.e. there are few media in SL). The recent growth in social media (virtual applications that allow the user to create and share their own content) has provided a new vector for the use of SL (whether in real time, or separated in space and time) and value SL as a Language of culture, identity and inclusion. The research surveyed Deaf students of a Bachelors program in Linguistics and shows that social media has become a new Agora for the Deaf Culture.