BSL:UPTAKE » Blog Archive » Citizenship and the Deaf Community (3.8 Role of the researcher/translator in the study of citizenship)

Citizenship and the Deaf Community (3.8 Role of the researcher/translator in the study of citizenship)

3.8 Role of the researcher/translator in the study of citizenship

In the spirit of transparency, as a researcher who is undertaking empowering research from within a qualitative tradition in the Deaf studies field, it falls on me to reflect briefly on my background as the researcher and translator. I also briefly outline the rationale and decision making involved in the establishment of the research project.

I am a BSL user, who first encountered sign language and developed a deaf identity while at mainstream primary school within a Partially Hearing Unit (PHU), where I was educated from 6 to 12 years of age. As with all deaf children in the PHU I was given extra English instruction, and use was made of my residual hearing. I was considered to be ‘partially deaf’. I then spent my secondary education (1975-1979) as the lone deaf pupil in a mainstream school from the second year onwards, having had in my first year of secondary education only minimal contact with the three other deaf pupils, then in their final year. Hence my first language is English. I returned to the Deaf community in the late 1980s, and since this time have also used Irish Sign Language, and have some experience of using International Sign Language at international conferences (though this is not extensive). BSL has therefore been internalised socially, with a small influence of Irish Sign Language, and is now my preferred language, which I use every day in my communication with Deaf and hearing people. I am therefore bilingual in English and BSL.

Apart from daily presence within the PHU, contact with the (adult) Deaf community in my early years was at an annual Christmas Deaf club event. This remained the case until school leaving age. After leaving compulsory education in 1979 I became active in left-wing politics within the mainstream; later I returned to formal education as a mature student in 1989 and obtained my BA in Cultural Studies in 1992. Returning to education as a full-time mature student also coincided with my return to the Deaf community; and after graduating I worked voluntary for one year with a Deaf Advice Service. I then obtained employment in development work with Deaf and hard of hearing people. I became further deafened in 1993 rendering the use of hearing aids obsolete. Since this time I have been ‘severely deaf’. In the mid-1990s I worked as a person-centred counsellor, and after the Federation of Deaf People was formed in the late 1990s began to develop a political role within the Deaf community. My personal development throughout the 1990s has therefore been a gradual process of bringing together the politics I had learnt in the mainstream with politics within the Deaf community. That is the role into which I have settled while undertaking the research project.

A studentship entitled “Citizenship and Deafness” was advertised by the University of Central Lancashire in early 2002 and this appealed to me, given my background in mainstream politics and politics in the Deaf community. The studentship arose directly as a result of political events that Deaf citizens had been leading, and was concerned to address some of the issues of these events from an academic perspective. My application for the post was successful and I then set about reading the relevant literature and shaping the project with the support of the supervisory team.