From Isolation to Empowerment

This study provides a brief review on the history of deaf community and the sign languages in order to describe the position of deaf people around the world in general and in Iranian particular. The research and evaluation of deaf individual from different aspects can result in a better knowledge of sign languages and their significance. Historically, deaf people have been examined from two main various perspectives: a medical viewpoint which considers a deaf individual handicapped missing the senses; and a sociological viewpoint which characterizes deaf people as social individuals, with certain cultures and languages similar to all other nations and groups. The first led to speech/ oral movements and approaches such as syncretistic method; while the second resulted in sign languages/ hand movements. However, the medical viewpoint caused deaf individuals to become isolated and thus various sign languages faded. The sociological viewpoint contributed to linguistic research and studies and deaf people’s empowerment, thereby resulted in the development of the deaf community and the world. Like oral languages, sign languages are fully-fledged and contain all linguistics components available; they also include a wide range of dialects and accents. Because of using signs, deaf people enjoy an enhanced vision; this leads to unique creativity and cultural and comprehension capabilities which pave the ground for developing various scientific disciplines. Here, the subjects will be discussed in future details.