A Study of the Identity, Culture and Language of a Sample of the Deaf Gay Male Community in Britain

Abstract

There appears to be a plethora of academic work focusing on minority cultures. However, the instance of conducting research into the characteristics, behaviours, in-group dynamics of specific minorities within the Deaf community is seldom tackled at length. Work specifically focused on is often relegated to a small section within a book or journal paper and
does not receive the attention it may warrant. This research was encouraged by the aspiration to fill this gap in knowledge and by the explicit research question: What is the identity, culture and language of the Deaf gay community? By seeking to establish what the Deaf gay community is, its culture, its identity, the language used and the issues it faces within the Deaf community and the gay community, the present work aims to pioneer and stimulate further research into the dynamics emerging in the relationship with those wider communities and organisations with which Deaf homosexuals engage.
Specialist literature discussing and analysing what the Deaf, gay and Deaf gay communities are have been reviewed, so that the present study could begin to put together a profile that brings together the distinctive features of this community. Such profile was reliant on surveying a cross section – albeit a small one given the time constraints and scope of this preliminary study – of the UK Deaf gay community so as to gain an insight as to what these three communities mean to their members.
The survey also intended to pursue a better understanding of the ways in
which Deaf gay people identify themselves within each community. Finding out what the ‘Deaf gay community is’ was also something that was sought to be defined in relation to what cultural aspects set it aside from the Deaf community or the gay community. It is considered that Gay Sign Variation is an important part of the Deaf gay community so the examination of language as an identifier for gay and Deaf gay people was to be explored. Lastly, it was considered whether a definition of the Deaf gay community could be achieved deriving information from the interviews carried out with fifteen research participants in Britain and by comparing and contrasting what emerges from the interviews with the characteristics, features, and definitions in the literature.