The Walkerville Weekly Reader

National Desk: Hard-hitting journalism from your completely un-biased (pinky swear!) reporters in Walkerville, VA.

Walkerville, VA
Monday, December 9, 2024
Carolyn Purcell, Editor

Reader Exposé: Mismediation of Deaf Culture and the tyranny of audism

Sign language interpreters are always pulled from the ranks of the hearing, and can have no understanding of how to communicate the thoughts and feelings of the deaf.

Fake sign language interpreter: Thamsanqa Jantjie, schizophrenic accused rapist and accused murderer, hired to interpret for President Barack Obama.; deaf; sign language

Audist plot to assassinate President Obama fails.

The deaf are more oppressed today than ever. They are oppressed by a hearing majority that stands between them and every major speaking event, that purports to mediate for them at every literary or poetry engagement, at every civic function.

At conventions, fan or professional, it is the hearing that tell them what is happening. At readings, it is the hearing that translate for them the emotional truths of the literary greats. Always, it is the hearing that stand between the deaf and enjoyment of the world.

For, after extensive research, the Reader can now reveal that all sign language interpreters are chosen from the audio-normative. I have interviewed translators at hundreds of events throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area, and every one of them, without exception, are of the hearing majority. These gesticulators that you see at every event are chosen by the audio-normative from the audio-normative and take it on themselves to describe the world, the events described, to any deaf who happen to be in the audience.

For the deaf, sign language is the language of thought just as spoken language is for you in the oppressive audist majority. But for the oppressor-translators, sign language is merely another language, translating the spoken into the signed as if everyone in the audience would, if they could, have heard the spoken directly. As if the spoken were the right language and the signed merely a broken mirror of it. As if everyone thinks in speech and must have it translated in and back.

Audism, like racism, is a matter of extreme importance. It is even a matter of national security. It is the reason that a deranged hearer can sign gibberish a few feet from the President without raising any flags among the Secret Service.

The hearing cannot translate, in their audio-limited experience, the trials and aggressions endured by the deaf and so cannot provide such truths as are needed by the deaf community.

The Reader urges that sign language translators be chosen from the deaf community, for otherwise the translation itself is an oppression and an aggression against deaf culture.

  1. <- Pope Francis warms
  2. Republican dictator ->