Institutionalised audism

The exclusion of deaf and disabled people from employment opportunities is set within the wider social organisation of the labour market, which in turn is linked to the broader issues of access to education, information and transport, as well as cultural and media representations of disabled people (Barnes & Mercer 2005). Society’s negative perception of disability and how it ‘deals with difference’ (Kyle & Pullen 1998: 51) directly impacts on deaf peoples’ working lives. This section looks briefly at the social outcomes of stigma (Goffman 1963), before considering the issue of institutionalised audism.

‘Stigma’ is described as being an undesired difference, i.e. a trait possessed by an individual that obtrudes into social interaction, drawing attention away from other attributes they might possess (Goffman 1963). Predominantly a social construct, stigma is influenced and shaped not only by the broader cultural and historical

contexts, but also by situational meaning and situational factors (Dovidio et al. 2000). Individuals without stigma can hold a belief that those people with a stigma are not quite human, and accordingly can exercise discrimination as a result of that belief (Goffman 1963). This discrimination, albeit largely unconscious and unintended, reduces the life chances and opportunities of the stigmatised individual. As a result individuals are dehumanised, threatened, disliked and stereotyped (Dovidio et al. 2000), and can lack full acceptance in the view of dominant society (Oyserman & Swim 2001). Stigmatisation, then, can exact considerable costs at all levels, personally, interpersonally and socially (Dovidio et al. 2000).

The visibility of an individual’s stigma is a crucial factor in how the stigmatised person is viewed by others (Goffman 1963). If the stigma disrupts and intrudes upon social interaction, all participants can experience levels of anxiety resulting in both stigmatised and non-stigmatised individuals trying to minimise the interaction or contact between them (Hbel et al. 2000). For profoundly deaf people, their ‘stigma’ is identified and made visible as soon as they begin to communicate, with the use of a signed language likely to be viewed as a stigmatising mark. The deaf employee’s stigma is further marked by their deviance from the norm, i.e. they require an SLI to communicate. Difficulties in communication can lead to other assumptions being made about the deaf individual’s ability, as other ‘imperfections’ are attributed as a result of the original ‘fault’ (Goffman 1963; Hbel et al. 2000). The intercultural elements of deaf/ hearing interaction undoubtedly bring into play hearing peoples’ unconscious and automatic ‘culturally specific inferential practices’ (Gumperz 1992: 302), with pejorative judgements being made about deaf peoples’ contribution to the interaction. The combination of unequal power relations and cultural stigmatisation can result in judgements about the deaf employee’s ability, based on a lack of shared linguistic knowledge. Thus, for deaf employees, questions are raised about their ability to perform their job, to socialise, be a part of a team etc. If communicative practices are stigmatised, then the continuing presence of the SLI to ‘help’ correct this deficiency may reinforce the attitude of hearing employees.

An understanding of the stigmatisation of deaf employees and the attitudes held by the hearing majority enables the examination of issues of oppression and institutionalised audism within the workplace. The combination of the stigma of

deafness, with the attempts by hearing people to discourage the use of a signed language and ‘otherwise undermine Deaf people’s linguistic and cultural integrity’, are strongly suggestive of oppression (Leonard et al. 2002: 5). Dominant groups can be reluctant to accept that their good intentions might be perceived by the minority group as anything other than what they intended. Their lack of understanding of how inequalities are formed and transformed in society, and of how the processes generating linguistic and cultural deprivation play a vital part in the reproduction of inequalities, prevents them from seeing the disabling nature of the environments in which they function (Branson & Miller 1995). Accordingly, the majority group in society is always uncomfortable, if not sometimes outraged, by the suggestion that they might be oppressors. However, the harsh truth is that as a minority group, deaf people have long suffered from oppression from the dominant hearing majority (Baker-Shenk 1985). Whilst not all oppressive behaviour is malicious in nature (Trowler & Turner 2002), the label of oppression cannot be rejected by the oppressor on the basis that they mean well (Kyle & Pullen 1988).

Thompson (1993: 61) referring to racism, states that it is ‘built into the structure of

society and its dominant institutions’, with the oppression and discrimination that is

faced by people from ethnic minority groups not being a reflection of individual prejudice, but rather ‘a reflection of discriminatory structures and practices’. Through the consideration of deaf people as a linguistic and cultural minority parallels can be drawn with what Turner (2007a) refers to as institutionalised audism. The pervasive, and often unconscious, attitudes that are embedded in major institutions, together with the discrimination directed at deaf people due to their hearing status, constitute institutionalised audism (Turner et al. 2003). The application of this frame of reference allows the consideration of the frequently ‘de-personalised but

deceptively powerful oppression’ which deaf people routinely experience (Turner

2007a: 63), at the crux of which is the ignorance surrounding the language choices deaf people make (Turner et al. 2003).

Deaf people have always been represented as the ‘other’ (Ladd 2003; Taylor & Darby 2003), and consequently have been seen as needing ‘their’ problems sorted out for them. This attitude extends into the workplace, which is dominated by hearing norms and practices, and where lack of hearing is considered the defining aspect of the deaf employee’s identity. Efforts to make the work domain accessible generally centre on

this status, with technological solutions providing the focus. Little, if any, consideration is given to making serious adjustments in terms of deaf peoples’ linguistic minority status, and thus oppression and discrimination is perpetuated. There is a difference between creating equality of opportunity and equality of outcome (Rose & Kiger 1995), and the ideal of enabling a deaf employee to access the workplace on an equal basis to their hearing peers has yet to be matched by the required resources and attitudinal shift.