The right to be heard: Citizenship and language

Political Geography 26 (2007) 121e140 www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo

The right to be heard: Citizenship and language Gill Valentine a,*, Tracey Skelton b b

a School of Geography, University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK Department of Geography, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK

Abstract In this paper we address the importance and contestation of language in terms of citizenship and the development of political communities by focusing on the example of a minority language e British Sign Language. Language is crucial to debates about citizenship and belonging because the State has to rely on language for its very functioning, indeed political practice itself is a form of communicative action. For individuals language is deeply implicated in their ability to claim and maintain their rights and in their affective connections with others and sense of identification. The paper therefore begins by identifying that Deaf people’s legal entitlements (e.g. to vote) are an abstract form of citizenship because as sign language users they have difficulties understanding both political and wider civil institutions and practices, and so lack the cultural proficiencies necessary to exercise citizenship in a substantive sense. We then go onto consider citizenship in the broader sense of how groups are included or situated in the public sphere, and in doing so to consider the extent to which Deaf people might be understood to have a liveable place in an oral society. The final section examines how the sense of injustice which flows from Deaf people’s experiences of marginalisation in the public realm means that they are developing alternative forms of political commitment predicated on non-state spaces of belonging e where they can live their language e at both local and transnational scales. The paper concludes by reflecting on the notion of differentiated citizenship and the implications of Deaf people’s claims to language rights. Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Language; Cultural; Citizenship; Deaf; Spaces of belonging

* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (G. Valentine), [email protected] (T. Skelton). 0962-6298/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2006.09.003

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Introduction Within political geography of the last decade there has been a growing discussion about cultural diversity (ethnic, racial, sexual etc.) and the implications of this for theories of citizenship (Bell & Binnie, 2000; Blomley, 1994; Isin & Turner, 2002; Miller, 2002; Painter & Philo, 1995). However, there is one form of cultural diversity that has been largely ignored by political geographers, linguistic diversity and the issue of language rights in relation to broader political questions about citizenship and forms of political community. Yet, a recent special issue of Social and Cultural Geography has drawn attention to the way that ontological realities are grounded in the use of language. Papers in this issue highlighted the importance of language as a powerful bond of belonging and collective identity, and as a resource for mobilizing, empowering and strengthening national identities and national consciousness (Desforges & Jones, 2001). In this paper we want to address the importance and contestation of language not just in terms of national identity but also in terms of citizenship and the development of political communities. Language is crucial to debates about citizenship and belonging because the State has to rely on language for its very functioning, indeed political practice itself is a form of communicative action (Barnett, 2004). For individuals language is deeply implicated in their ability to claim and maintain their rights and in their affective connections with others and sense of identification. As such linguistic minority groups need to have space to live their language. Yet, despite these roles that language plays, the politics of linguistic rights have to-date passed largely unnoticed in Geography. Here, we explore these issues by focusing on the experience of Deaf people who use British Sign Language (BSL). In doing so this paper draws on, and contributes to, work within political and social geography by highlighting cultural processes of citizenship and the cultural proficiencies necessary to be a citizen; examining citizenship in the broader sense of the extent to which a group is situated in the public realm and might be understood to have a liveable place in society; and by identifying the possibilities for a linguistic minority to develop alternative forms of political commitment predicated on non-state spaces of belonging at a transnational scale. The paper begins by providing contextual information about Deaf language and culture, and outlining the empirical research on which the paper is based. Sign language BSL, as the natural language of Deaf people, is an indigenous language and the 4th most commonly used language in the country.1 It is estimated that there are between 60,000 and 120,000 sign language users in the UK, a quarter of a million in the US, and that globally 4e5 million people sign (Ladd, 2003). BSL is a complex visual language that has its own structure and grammar that differs from oraleaural English (Kyle & Woll, 1983, 1985; Sutton-Spence & Woll, 1998). Rather than acting out words, BSL involves the three-dimensional use of space in which hand shapes and the speed, direction and type of movements, combined with facial and bodily expressions, are used to convey meanings. Unlike verbal languages that are essentially linear, visual languages such 1 In1982 the British Deaf Association first published a manifesto demanding official recognition of BSL as a native language, and has been lobbying parliament ever since. On the18th March, 2003 the UK Government took the first steps to recognize BSL as a language in its own right.

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as BSL can simultaneously convey different pieces of information and layers of meaning. For example, different hands might be used to make subject and object signs within a signing space which can be employed to indicate location, while facial expressions are being used to show intensity, and head movements used to indicate whether this is positive or negative. As a result, in addition to the sort of changes in message that can occur as a result of errors when one spoken language is interpreted into another spoken language e such as the interpreter using a wrong word or pitching the register incorrectly e there is a further inevitable loss of meaning when a visual language is interpreted into a linear spoken language and the written word (Hale, 1997; Kyle & Woll, 1985). Deaf people whose first or preferred language is BSL regard themselves as a linguistic and cultural minority. As such hearing people who are fluent signers and whose identities and behaviours are consistent with the norms, traditions and practices of Deaf culture might be considered part of the Deaf community. Here, a capital D is used to indicate this construction of D/deafness. However, most deaf people are born into hearing families and so their first recognition of deafness is usually through a medical model of disability in which the emphasis is on teaching learning to communicate orally with hearing people through lip-reading and speaking. While BSL and Deaf culture is passed from generation to generation through Deaf schools and Deaf clubs, some deaf people never learn BSL and do not become part of Deaf culture rather they self-identify as disabled and communicate orally. The writing of ‘deaf’ is commonly used to imply deafness as a medical or disability matter (Corker, 1996; Lane, 1997; Padden, 1980/1991). The boundary between what are known as ‘big D’ and ‘little d’ identities can be fluid over time and space. For example, learning BSL often results in a shift over time in an individual’s self-identity from deaf to Deaf. Likewise, in different Deaf spaces an individual’s behaviour might be regarded by others as more or less consistent with the social practices of Deaf culture, and therefore their identity might be ascribed in different contexts as Deaf or deaf (an ascription that may also differ from their own self-identity). Here, we generally use the convention of writing D/deaf in a dual form to reflect this fluidity and complexity, and to render our discussion inclusive of the different identities and positionalities articulated by our informants throughout the research upon which this paper is based. Where we just use the terms Deaf or deaf we are referring to the specific differentiated meanings outlined above. Methods Our findings are based on in-depth interviews2 with 41 ‘Deaf people’. Thirty of these interviewees are heterosexual and 11 are self-defined lesbians and gay men. One informant is a British Asian of Muslim faith, one a British Asian of Sikh faith and one of mixed AfroCaribbean/white British heritage. The other informants are all white, of whom one identifies as Irish and another Russian. In addition, 14 service providers for the D/deaf (e.g. social workers with D/deaf people, interpreters, representatives of the local authority, disability support workers for students) were interviewed. The research informants were recruited from the Midlands of the UK by a combination of methods including: snowballing from multiple sources, advertisements on the Internet and in 2

The names of all those quoted, and the people and places referred to in these quotations have been changed in an effort to protect their anonymity and confidentiality.

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newsletters, and contact with a range of relevant support, advice and social groups. Our interviewees are drawn from a wide range of social backgrounds (in terms of their parents’ social class, educational qualifications, housing situation, and employment status) and have also grown up in a range of different family forms. All the interviews, which were conducted by the authors3 in a place of the informants’ choice, lasted between one and two hours. These were audio tape-recorded, transcribed, and then analysed using conventional social science techniques. Five of the interviewees opted to use oral methods of communication (lip-reading and speech). The other interviews were conducted in British Sign Language (BSL) or Sign Supported English (SSE). As we are both hearing and have only basic signing skills we worked with professional interpreters chosen by the interviewees. In most cases the interpreter signed the interviewer’s spoken questions to the informant, and then verbalized the signed responses back to the interviewer. These exchanges were audio-tape recorded.4 In some cases the interpreter signed the questions to the informant who then responded verbally to the interviewer.

Why language matters: the cultural proficiencies necessary to exercise citizenship The concept of citizenship has a contested history being variously described in terms of membership of a political community (republican/communitarian definition, see Pettit, 1997) and in terms of the relationship between the individual and the state (liberal definition, see Marshall, 1992) and sometimes as both (e.g. Kymlicka, 2003: 147). These waters have been further muddied by recognition that some groups may have citizenship in a formal sense (in terms of rights and responsibilities) but not in a substantive sense in that they are unable to exercise their citizenship and are not included in the public realm. Thus, the term citizenship has been extended by neorepublicans from a strict political sense, in terms of legal status/rights and duties, to a wider social sense in terms of the actual political influence and the ability to participate in/ be included in society that people may have or lack (i.e. the extent to which they may have a liveable place in society) (van Gunsteren, 1998). This conceptualisation of citizenship acknowledges that social inequalities should not be allowed to prevent people from having a reasonable chance of access to political equality. Drawing on this approach, in this paper we are concerned with citizenship not as a possession but rather as something that is constituted through situated everyday practices and thus is both fluid and ambiguous. More specifically, we recognize that the exercise of citizenship is something that we learn by being involved in, and gaining experience of, civil practices and institutions and by observing the actions of other citizens. In this section, we show how language proficiency is crucially implicated in this process. The traditional model or understanding of a state is that it is the possession of the dominant nation group and so privileges this group’s language, culture and identity. While many states do not have a formally declared state language and may take an hands off approach to linguistic choice rather than forcing individuals/groups to learn the dominant language, nonetheless, 3 Three interviews were conducted by Carol Devanney who was employed as a Research Assistant on this project (JaneMay 2001). 4 We originally intended to video signed interviews so that these interview would be recorded in BSL, thus enabling the interpretation of the signs to be checked by the informant and interpreter. However, most of our informants were uncomfortable with being filmed and so we resorted to audio-tape recording of the BSL interpretation instead.

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language is implicitly a requirement for exercising citizenship because public services (e.g. law, education) and the political system only operate in particular language(s). Effectively, other indigenous linguistic/cultural groups and new immigrants are expected to assimilate by learning the dominant language through which the state functions and public institutions operate, or be excluded from public and political discourse (Kymlicka & Patten, 2003). Individuals or groups who cannot communicate effectively in the State language have difficulties gaining information about or experience of civil practices and institutions and observing the actions of other citizens, and consequently lack the cultural proficiency necessary to exercise citizenship. This is clearly demonstrated through the experience of BSL users. In the UK the State legitimises particular ways of communicating in public space in which a culture of communication centred on verbal language is privileged over visual and gestural forms of communication5 such as sign languages. Yet many Deaf people do not learn to speak, and some find lip-reading difficult. As such because Deaf people are the only group for whom there is no fully satisfactory alternative to sign language communication, they are in effect, as a former president of the U.S. National Association for the Deaf has described ‘‘.foreigners among a people whose language they can never learn’’ (cited in Van Cleve & Crouch, 1989: ix). This has consequences for the extent to which Deaf people are able to be involved in and gain experience of political and wider civil institutions and practices. There are two aspects to this: information and communication. Languages affect the production, consumption and circulation of information and knowledge about civil and political institutions, and practices within a State. Hearing people often overlook or are oblivious to the freedoms and entitlements that come from the ability to pick up this information through the act of listening, all of which D/deaf people are denied. Information environments include: television, radio, cinema, announcements, informal and spontaneous chat. Moreover, because D/deaf children commonly find it difficult to communicate with hearing people they are often late in developing literacy skills, a problem that is often compounded by the inappropriate or inadequate educational support at school (Foster, 1996; Foster & Holcomb, 1990; Watson, Gregory, & Powers, 1999). The different grammatical structure of BSL also means that some Deaf people find the grammar of spoken and written English difficult. Basic levels of literacy within the Deaf community are therefore relatively low. As a result not only do D/deaf people find it difficult to pick up information from listening but they also struggle to access information from books, documents, leaflets and other conventional sources of written information necessary to develop the cultural proficiency to exercise citizenship in mainstream hearing society. Here Janice describes her complete lack of understanding or awareness of, the political concepts of a strike, picketing and implicitly trade unions, when she was employed as a clerical worker at a colliery during the UK miners’ dispute. Janice: So there was the strike, and I didn’t know what strike meant. you haven’t got the sign.at school and I just got this mouth pattern strike [from lip-reading] and I thought well what’s that mean? I looked it up in the dictionary, I thought oh gosh that means they’re giving up work and I thought I don’t know what to do, but I thought well I’ll still come to work. And the next morning got on the bus and there were a whole row of

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Although, ‘the use of visual forms of communication is as much part of the natural heritage of human beings as the spoken word. Gestures of hands and arms, the face and body are used almost unconsciously in everyday conversation for emphasis, illustration and so on.[and] throughout history there are many examples of groups who have developed this ability to communicate visually (Miles, 1988: 8)’.

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miners picketing, and I thought what’s going, so I got out of the bus, and I said to the woman what’s going on and she just waved her hands around, she couldn’t be bothered to explain anything to me, so again I felt really left out, I thought I just don’t know what to do, I don’t know what’s going on. So I followed this woman in and the men were spitting, they threw stones at us, and I thought I didn’t know whether to carry on walking or go back home and the woman said to me, if you go home you won’t get paid, I thought oh I don’t know what to do, I’d better follow her but it was horrible having things thrown at you and being spat at and I’d got no, I didn’t have a clue what was going on (former clerical assistant at a colliery). The problems that D/deaf people have picking up information about civil and political practices in an oral based society are compounded in interactive contexts. Everyday communication environments e including all those relational spaces in the public realm within which we interact verbally with others, from the streets, shops and banks to the doctors’ surgery e are not very accessible to many D/deaf people because they do not have the proficiency to communicate effectively in oral English. At the same time because sign language is not recognized as a national language the majority of hearing people cannot communicate in sign language. D/deaf people may have rights (to work, to vote, to health care etc.) but they are not always able to exercise them because as we outlined above they lack the cultural proficiencies to participate in the dominant oral based hearing society. For example a common language is essential to democracy e in the sense that democracy not only involves the formal process of voting but also informal activities such as debating and exchanging political views. Barnett (2004) highlights how participation in discourses about matters of public importance consists of practices around the consumption of books, newspapers, radio, and TV programmes that are circulated by media and communications industries. Indeed Kymlicka and Patten (2003: 13) describe democracy as a ‘talk-centric process’. As such, if hearing and Deaf citizens cannot understand each other and communicate then democratic politics is compromised because Deaf and hearing people do not share a common language that allows them to deliberate over political issues. It is also difficult for Deaf people to hold political agents accountable through democratic processes and so the gap between Deaf citizens and political representatives is potentially wider than that between hearing citizens and political representatives. Not surprisingly D/deaf people rarely vote in national elections because they commonly lack information on political issues and understanding of the political process (Bateman, 1998). Ronald, explains his sense of disconnection from policies. Ronald: Hearing people can pick up information about like Government policies, you now what’s happening with our taxes etcetera, whereas we can’t. We just access information from subtitles [on the television news]. And then when it comes to voting I can’t be bothered to vote, you know so I just think what’s the point? Sometimes they come, you know councillors come and ask us why we’re [Deaf people] not voting. I’m saying well I have no access to your policies so I shut the door in their face and say goodbye. Hearing people can talk about these things.but lots of Deaf people aren’t bothered about voting because they have no access to information on different issues. I think the Government really should provide access in sign language about policies and all sorts of issues then we could access it more but we don’t get that.that’s a big problem really. Beyond the impact language has on Deaf people’s abilities to exercise citizenship in the strict political sense of understanding political practices and being able to participate in

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political processes, language also shapes Deaf peoples’ access to participate in wider civil institutions and exercise wider rights. Moreover, access to one set of rights is often dependent on another, and so language struggles in one everyday space can shape opportunities in another. For instance, until the mid 1980s Deaf people were forced to study using oral methods of communication however ineffective these were in practice. This refusal to allow Deaf people the right to be educated in their own language, BSL, meant that many Deaf people lost educational opportunities. Although educational policy has recently shifted towards providing sign support and bi-lingual education for Deaf people, levels of support in schools and universities often remain inappropriate, this combined with the low expectations of parents and teachers mean that Deaf young people’s levels of achievement remain below the national average (Powers, Gregory, & Thoutenhoofd, 1998). In turn Deaf people’s lack of attainment in the oral education system can limit their workplace options. Deaf people are disproportionately concentrated in low skilled, low paid work and so their limited disposable income also undermines their power and consequently rights as consumer. Stuart’s experience below illustrates how Deaf people’s lack of cultural proficiency to communicate orally and consequent processes of marginalisation in hearing environments can affect their ability to exercise their rights to employment. Stuart: I, when I rang up [using typetalk6] for an application form once for a job I said [by typing his words to an operator, who then verbalizes the message to the hearing person on the phone, and relays their response to the Deaf person in text] you know ‘can you send me an application form?’ And the woman.says ‘no, because you’re deaf’, I said ‘well hang on, what’s the problem?’ She said well you can’t use the phone, I said well I’m using type talk [a form of communication which allows a Deaf person to make and receive a call through the medium of a third person], and I told them that, and she said ‘oh we need someone who can make a quick, rapid phone call, be a quick response’. Likewise, a lack of language rights can also exclude D/deaf people from information about drugs, alcohol, safe sex etc. that can mean that they are exposed to social risks in the community and are unaware of their rights to particular forms of health or social care. Not surprisingly, Verlinde (1987: 97) describes D/deaf people as experiencing a sense of ‘civic disenfranchisment’. In this section we have shown that D/deaf people’s legal entitlements (e.g. to vote) are an abstract form of citizenship because they have difficulties gaining experiences of, and understanding, both political and wider civil institutions and practices, and that therefore they lack the cultural proficiencies necessary to exercise citizenship in a substantive sense. In the following section we develop this argument further by considering the extent to which Deaf people might be understood, in neo-republican terms, to have a liveable place in society. Here we focus on citizenship not just in the formal sense of legal entitlements but also in the broader sense of how one is included or situated in the public sphere. A liveable place in society? Language and the lived experience of ‘citizenship’ Painter and Philo (1995) argue that the conventional legal definition of citizenship does not allow for qualitative differences in people’s everyday lived experiences. They write ‘‘If people 6 A telephone system for D/deaf and hearing impaired people whereby a D/deaf person types what they want to say, a telephone operator then speaks the words to a hearing person on the telephone, and then types the hearing person’s responses back to the D/deaf person.

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cannot be present in public spaces (streets, squares, parks, cinemas, churches, town halls) without feeling uncomfortable, victimised and basically ‘out of place’, then it must be questionable whether or not these people can be regarded as citizens at all, or, at least, whether they will regard themselves as full citizens on an equal footing with other people who seem perfectly ‘at home’ when moving about in public spaces (Painter & Philo, 1995: 115)’’. The evidence of this research is that hearing people have a lack of equal regard for D/deaf people because they do not share the same language. As a result many D/deaf people do not feel an affective sense of belonging in the hearing world or a sense of shared existence with hearing people. Corker (1998: 13) comments ‘‘[w]hen Deaf and hearing or disabled people come together.we exist in the same place but in all other respects we are separate’’. This has consequences for the way Deaf people are situated in the public realm, and consequently their ability to participate fully in society, in particular several processes of marginalisation are at work. The most blatant is that D/deaf people are commonly ignored in everyday spaces. Hearing people rarely have any signing skills and often lack the patience to try and communicate with non-speaking D/deaf people through gesture or other improvised forms of communication. Interpreters are expensive, in short supply and so only tend to be used in exceptional circumstances. As a result Peter describes below how because of his limited ability to communicate orally he is effectively rendered invisible in a state where the cultural proficiency to hear and talk is implicitly assumed. Peter: Now, they posted me an electricity bill and I was reading through the bill and .I was trying to work out the charges on there and I couldn’t.so I thought right I’ll go off [to] the [electricity] shop.and there was one woman behind the window, behind the counter and there was a massive queue. and I was next in line, ready to go up to the window and the woman was there, and I presented my bill and said look I’m deaf, and the woman looked and basically she sighed and I said can I have some pen and paper please, and her non-verbal communication was appalling and she got paper and a pen and she shoved it at me. so I was writing down what I needed to know and I gave it to her and she was reading through it and then, her eyebrows raised.she didn’t explain it to me, she just handed me a piece of paper. you know, she told me to step out of the way more or less so other people were served before me. While many D/deaf people like Peter are self-confident enough to assert their presence in hearing environments, others are less self-assured. Indeed, some Deaf people are so alienated by the lack of Deaf awareness among hearing people and the difficulties that they experience communicating in oral English, that they withdraw or self-exclude themselves from particular hearing environments. Bernice, a young Deaf woman describes how communication difficulties deter her from going out alone. Bernice: I quite often I’ll go in places with my sister and she’ll be always with me and she’ll sort things out for me, so I’m never on my own and sometimes I’ll go to the shops or to a restaurant myself and I’ll point, you know I’ll point to things that are written down and things like, I don’t know hamburgers, easy to, easy to recognise the words.I guess I wouldn’t even go myself, I’d always go with my sister, I’d be too nervous by myself, I wouldn’t be confident. Some D/deaf people are not just ignored by hearing people but are also actively expelled from ‘public’ spaces by them. Like other marginal social groups (Sibley, 1995), Deaf people signing are a nuisance category because they disturb normative understandings of appropriate

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ways of being in public space. While verbal skills are often regarded by hearing people as an innate quality of being human, the facially expressive and gesticular nature of BSL is regarded by some hearing people as animal-like or even bestial. Several informants described being expelled from social spaces such as pubs because hearing people found their signing ‘repulsive’ or ‘threatening’. Others recalled incidents of being driven out of public environments because their signing was being mimicked and ridiculed, or they were treated as mentally incompetent because they could not communicate clearly in spoken English. Jade explains: Jade: We might be walking around and my friends, signing with them and quite a lot of times you know, on the bus in particular, on the street you’d get hearing people were kind of mocking us by gesturing. it is quite off putting. In this sense some D/deaf people’s experience of marginalisation in public places are similar to those experienced by individuals with mental ill-health (Parr, 1997). Even where D/deaf people are accommodated in public spaces they can still be estranged from them because of the ways that everyday socio-spatial environments are (re)produced through talk. Talk is crucial to all human activity (Laurier, 1998). Goffman (1974) has used the term interactional frame to describe the identities, roles and relations, activities and purposes reproduced through conversational behaviour. Likewise, ethno-methodologists have used studies of talk ‘‘to examine how social order is worked out locally through conversations in courtrooms, classrooms, doctors’ surgeries, air traffic control towers, news interviews and scientific laboratories’ (Laurier, 1998: 37)’’. For example, studies of the workplace have demonstrated how important informal conversations before meetings, gossip in the staff room, chats over lunch or a post-work drink can be, both for the way business is done, and for the networking and career opportunities of individuals. As such Deaf people’s estrangement from these exchanges can affect their ability to participate fully in the workplace and lead them to feel insecure and anxious about their professional identities and relationships (Young, Ackerman, & Kyle, 2000). The use and interpretation of voices in different kinds of space also contributes to defining the character of these environments and the spatiality of power (Delph-Januirek, 1999, 2001). An inability to read tone, irony, humour, emphasis or authority from ‘voice’ e how things are said, rather than what is said e can result in Deaf people appearing to respond or behave inappropriately for the environment that they are in. More generally, talk is often about elsewhere, it is one of the ways that we ‘shift out in space/ time’ (Laurier, 1998: 37) but because of the difficulties that D/deaf people have communicating effectively with hearing people they do not have the cultural proficiency to articulate their own social and political identities or lifestyles in this way. This can lead them to being estranged from hearing people who misread their taciturnness as a sign that they are not very intelligent or do not have political views to share. In contrast, when hearing people can sign Deaf people can become more ‘real’ because they are able to share complex conversations about their political views, and identities (Young et al., 2000). Jill explains how whether she is in a Deaf or hearing environment shapes her ability to be herself. Jill: I’m a different person in both, in both worlds. I think in.Deaf worlds I am my own person, in the hearing world I change, I try to keep things simple, I try and keep communication down to a minimum, you know don’t socialize, communicate as much. In this sense language is important because of the way it constructs our everyday realities and situates us in e or in the case of Deaf people, marginalises them from the public realm.

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As Turner (1990: 14e15, original emphasis) argues ‘‘Different cultures may not only use different language systems but they also, in a definitive sense, inhabit different worlds’’. Given the qualitative differences in Deaf and hearing people’s lived experiences in the public realm e because of the way language situates them in this context e many Deaf people do not regard themselves as on an equal footing with hearing people. As such despite sharing the same legal entitlements (e.g. right to vote) as hearing people, Andrea and Celia implicitly identify language as separating hearing and Deaf people into distinct, unequal and antagonistic groups. Andrea: I think if the hearing community were more aware of Deaf issues, like for example if they accepted sign language as our own language.you know we have to accept them, you know we have to accept hearing people as their language is English but they won’t accept us as being Deaf and learn BSL, it’s not equal. I mean it’s strange because we live in this country, we’re both the same, we’re both hearing, we’re both British, you’re hearing, I accept you, I’m Deaf but you won’t accept me, I mean its strange you know. I think when hearing people accept Deaf people I think then information will be open, you know. Celia: You have English which you speak [to interviewer], erm there’s Welsh, Scottish and Deaf people’s language [all native languages], and ours is an original British language. I mean you get people from Japan and Indian people who speak their own language and they speak English and you think well you know they’ve got interpreters, they’ve got their language, well Deaf people should have recognition of their language. There’s not enough interpreter provision, there’s not enough recognition of British Sign Language and yet you have Asian people treated with respect and they’re treated as the majority [sic], whereas Deaf people are not treated properly as, as people with a minority language, and I think the Government does, has not got a brilliant attitude on this. As this last quotation implies the issue of citizenship and ‘belonging’ leads some D/deaf people to draw unfavourable comparisons between their own rights e as users of an indigenous language who are limited from learning spoken English by their impairment e with that of linguistic minorities in the UK who speak non-indigenous oral languages. It is a perception of injustice that is often articulated in racist terms. Such racism means that not only do D/deaf people from ethnic minority groups feel like partial citizens in a hearing society but they can also feel excluded from Deaf culture which is predominantly white, and therefore experienced by them as an extension of hearing white culture (Ahmad, Darr, Jones, & Nisar, 1998; Jones, Atkin, & Ahmad, 2001). In sum, in this section we have argued that while D/deaf people in contemporary society might share the legally defined rights and responsibilities as hearing citizens e and as such share legal citizenship, as the quotations in the previous section suggest they do not share what Hall and Williamson (1999) would term ‘lived citizenship’. Notably, the hegemony of spoken language in everyday space means that Deaf people who use sign language are commonly ignored, expelled or estranged by hearing people. In other words, because most Deaf people cannot use spoken English effectively e the language legitimized and privileged by the State e they are not included as equals in the everyday public realm by hearing people. The sense of injustice which flows from the experiences of marginalisation described in this section mean that growing numbers of D/deaf people feel emotionally detached from hearing society and do not share a sense of political commitment and responsibility to the State.

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In the next section, we examine the consequences of the sense of injustice experienced by Deaf people in the public realm by considering in more detail the ways in which BSL positions Deaf people within a wider political community. Spaces of withdrawal: the making of deaf political communities As Hobsbawm (1990: 11) has observed ‘we cannot assume that for most people national identification e when it exists e excludes, or is always or ever superior to, the remainder of the set of identifications which constitute the social being. In fact it is always combined with identification of another kind, even when it is felt superior to them’. For Deaf people who use BSL the experience of being marginalized by hearing people in the public realm and the frustration and loneliness of not being understood mean that they share a commonality that creates a strong sense of identification with each other (Bateman, 1998). Indeed Dolnick (1993) has described Deaf people as a ‘new ethnic group’ on the basis that there is an observable trait e sign language e by which they can be recognized; individuals receive differential treatment by society on the basis of this trait; there is an awareness of shared identity with others in this social group and self-image is organised around this identification. Although ‘the Deaf community is the first ‘‘community of relatedness’’ to emerge in the disability sphere (Corker, 1998: 135)’, it is not Deaf people’s impairment but rather their shared language e sign language e that provides a powerful affective bond of belonging and collective political and social identity. In a similar vein, Segrott (2001) has argued that the Welsh language plays a crucial role in the construction of Welsh identities and communities in London, UK. The transition to learning BSL, and being able to access and communicate freely in the Deaf world is often described by Deaf people who have grown up in hearing families and communities in terms of a homecoming or a transition from a family of origin to a family of choice (Corker, 1996). For many Deaf people becoming part of the Deaf community through learning sign language is crucial to their own sense of self-acceptance and it transforms their lives (Emerton, 1998) by opening up a new world and new sense of ‘citizenship’ and belonging. Tina describes the importance of sign language in giving Deaf people a sense of place in the world. Tina: there is a D/deaf community because we need our own language, we need to feel that there are people with whom we mix, that we understand each other. There are things that people that you talk about in the outside world they wouldn’t understand and also having to talk to people on people and lip-reading it’s really difficult to understand each other.It’s completely different in the D/deaf community where you’re all using the same kind of communication.it’s great having a big strong D/deaf group where you really understand each other. The Deaf community constitutes a ‘counterpublic’ (cf. Fraser, 1992) in that it is a strongly bonded sub-ordinate group that has developed an oppositional interpretation of its members’ social and political interests and needs. It believes in Deaf people’s political right to selfdetermination, the right to exist as a separate sub-cultural group, and Deaf people’s right to have access to segregated education in BSL. Members have a critical relationship to hearing society and assert the positive attributes of being Deaf and distance themselves from the concept of impairment (Corker, 1998). As such in order to be part of the Deaf community it is necessary to ‘accept that [it has] cultural rules, and that you have to fit in with them (Ladd, 1996: 121)’. In particular, oralism is discounted or devalued by the Deaf community in the

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same way that BSL is devalued by hearing society. There is a strong suspicion of ‘hearing’ ways, such as using the voice (within Deaf spaces those people who might lip-read and speak in hearing environments ‘switch off’ their voice and use only sign language). Those D/deaf people who can ‘pass’ as hearing because of their oral communication skills, or who are strongly embedded in the hearing community and do not sign, often struggle to be accepted as part of the Deaf community, being regarded as having a bad attitude or being a ‘heafie’ (Corker, 1996). Even hearing children who have grown up in Deaf families and whose first language is sign language can never truly feel accepted by the Deaf community (MudgettDeCaro, 1998). Corker (1996: 200) explains ‘‘The Deaf community shows fluid boundaries within, but its boundary with other communities is rigid and does not allow for easy movement in and out. This creates a very strong feeling of ‘us’ and ‘them’, which is ultimately a consequence of oppression, though it may be attributed to ‘cultural difference’. The community does not easily tolerate coexistence of diverse elements in the wider deaf community, as evidenced by the difficulty of gaining access to the Deaf community when in a state of transition or ambivalence about Deafness’’. Jill describes the way language bounds the Deaf community. Jill: I’ve met some.friends of mine, you know they’ve tried to fit into the hearing world, you know.but they can’t do it, and they end up, they’re not happy. And now I speak to them because they’ve not learned how to sign, they don’t fit in the Deaf world either. You know, so they’re right, they’re on the cusp and caught in the middle and it’s awful, awful situation. But I’m really glad, really fortunate that I, I learnt how to sign and I fit in with the Deaf world. ‘Language is a community based attribute [but] respect for individuals’ language rights alone will not sustain a language’. Rather, the community basis of language means that ‘individuals also need a space in which to live it’ (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997: 212). For BSL users it is the space of the Deaf Club which has crucially facilitated this counterpublic where Deaf people are able to organize themselves independently of the formal frameworks of citizenship and to develop a sense of active belonging which compensates for their sense of political and social powerlessness in hearing society. Language and the exclusive space of citizenship at the local scale Deaf clubs have a long history. A strong network of what were originally called ‘missions’, established by Deaf people themselves in major UK towns, can be dated as far back as the 1880s. By the turn of the 20th century these had also extended into smaller communities, providing a space for people to live their language, which included opportunities to socialise and participate in sport, drama, education and so on, in BSL in over 200 locations in the UK (Ladd, 1988). One consequence of the way that Deaf communities have developed around specific geographical venues in the UK is that BSL has become a very regionally distinct language. The close-knit localized nature of Deaf clubs also means that they can be experienced as quite ‘closed’ even by Deaf people coming from other places. Here Peter describes his visit to a Deaf club in London. Peter: there were some people I knew, I recognised one or two of them and I went over, I said excuse me how are you? I’m Deaf, I’m from Scunthorpe, and all sort of started signing away and, and looked towards the rest of the group and totally ignored me, and they

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left me out, they excluded me, so I was waiting for them to sort of accept me into the group. If I moved to London, I’d have to work really hard, roll my sleeves up, you know, to try and be accepted into pubs where Deaf people go and be accepted by the group, for them to become my friends and to accept me, it would take a long time. Using the space of margins to develop a politics of resistance and stake a claim for citizenship is a well established tactic among oppressed groups (e.g. hooks, 1990). Hubbard (2001) points out how women have used marginal locations in this way to challenge patriarchy, while lesbians and gay men have used residential and commercial spaces, in ‘ghettos’ or ‘villages’ such as West Hollywood, US, to make a visible claim to citizenship (e.g. Forrest, 1995). These sites enable subversive discourses to be made public and allow marginal groups to force recognition of their existence and contest the mainstream (Blomley, 1994; Duncan, 1996). Indeed, Kilian (1998: 124) defines public as the ‘power to access’ and privacy as the ‘power to exclude’. Drawing on this definition Hubbard (2001: 64) argues that ‘many lesbians and gay men have too much publicity (in that they can access a number of different spaces) but not enough privacy (because they lack the ability to exercise control over those spaces by not being able to exclude others from them)’. Yet, in the case of Deaf clubs Deaf people have not used these spaces to force recognition of their existence in mainstream civic culture and to re-territorialise public space (although national D/deaf organizations do campaign around issues such as the recognition of BSL). Rather, Deaf clubs might be better understood as ‘spaces of withdrawal’ from the wider public where in the face of inequalities Deaf people can develop their own alternative norms, values and identities away from the interventions of hearing people. Notably, for many D/deaf people their experiences of the hearing world are either so negative and unrewarding, or so irrelevant in terms of their aspirations, that opting out of the hearing world (including paid work) is a positive choice and a political act. They have little interest in the hearing community, their focus instead is only on Deaf community-wide issues (Bateman, 1998). Deaf people primarily marry other Deaf people and want to have Deaf children (Schein, 1989), while surveys suggest that if it were possible to have an operation to enable them to hear the majority of D/deaf people would refuse this treatment (Lane, 1997). Emerton (1998: 141) therefore concludes that ‘[E]xcept perhaps for work, it is entirely possible for an individual to construct his or her social world within the boundaries of this sub-society [Deaf community], and the individual who does so is likely to be rewarded richly in terms of recognition and acceptance by the group’. Some Deaf people therefore have a strong sense of political separatism from, and defiance towards, the hearing world, as Ruby explains: Ruby: I prefer to be with Deaf people. I would say I.I hate being with hearing people. Interviewer: Can you tell me a bit about why? Ruby: Because we’re always being discriminated against, yeah, whenever that happens I get really stressed and really get angry about it, and I have to go get rid of it by talking to my Mum. In contrast to Hubbard’s characterisation of lesbian and gay communities then, Deaf people have ‘privacy’ e namely the power to exclude oral communicators e but not ‘publicity’ in terms of the power to freely access the wider public sphere. While there are many positive aspects to such ‘critically exclusive spaces’ (Hubbard, 2001: 66), such an insular form of politics

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also bring its own dangers. Notably, separatism can diminish D/deaf people’s ability to communicate with hearing people and therefore access education, employment and health rights in the hearing world and so further their socio-economic marginalisation. Dani describes how their ability to communicate with hearing people has declined: Dani: I felt good being among the D/deaf people, felt like I was one of them, yeah, felt good and being in X college, you know being around D/deaf people all the time and I started to, I suppose to drift apart from hearing people, I was spending more time you know with, with D/deaf people, so the more time I spent in X college, I think you know I, I almost lost my erm ability to sort of speak so well with hearing people. So some, I struggle more now than I ever did with hearing people cos I’ve spent so much of my time with D/deaf people, you know, there’s so many D/deaf people here. A further danger of separatism is that, like any strongly bounded community, the privileging of sameness around particular aspects of identities can also generate exclusions (Young, 1990). As earlier quotations in this paper have already described deaf people who are oral communicators, and those from ethnic minority groups commonly experience marginalisation within the D/deaf community, and are thus trapped in a space of inbetweeness, belonging neither in the hearing or D/deaf worlds (see also Ahmad et al., 1998; Jones et al., 2001; Taylor, 1999; Taylor & Meherali, 1991). This section has demonstrated how Deaf people e in parallel with other cultural groups e have a stronger sense of allegiance to, and identification with, their own cultural group within the nation than with the nation at large. Sassen (2002) has suggested that such practices represent denationalized citizenship. However, unlike many cultural minorities within the nation Deaf people do not necessarily see the nation state as a normative frame of reference for their ‘community’ rather they share a political sense of identification and belonging that goes beyond the nation. Language and non-state spaces of identity Despite the very exclusive nature of Deaf Clubs in the UK there is a growing sense of international consciousness and traffic between Deaf communities around the world. In particular, the Internet has opened up the world for Deaf people by enabling them to access information and a means to communicate with each other on a national and international scale that bypasses oral technologies like the telephone. As such D/deaf people are increasingly taking advantage of the Internet to facilitate their international travel and to develop personal global connections, as well as to organize politically and self-represent their communities. Indeed, while sign languages vary both within, as well as between nations, there are strong grammatical similarities between 200 sign languages of the world. Gestural languages are also more flexible and easily adapted to enable cross-lingual communication than oral languages, and therefore offer more possibilities for creating what Sassen (2002) has described as ‘nonstate spaces of cultural identity’, as Stuart explains: Stuart: It’s very easy for Deaf people because we don’t really have to learn a completely different language, it’s like an English person going to Germany has got to learn some German which is completely different, we just go over and we, we sign and we you know each make adjustments and pick it up from each other.

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In this sense sign language potentially enables Deaf people’s political practices to go beyond the nation. Moreover, Deaf people are unusual because they are a linguistic group that has a community in every country in the world. Ladd (2003: 29) explains ‘[T]hey [Deaf people] know that in every country in the world, in every tribe in the farthest flung Amazonian rainforests, there are people like themselves. They know that if they met any of those people, they could, despite their very different sign languages, fall into conversation and learn about each others’ cultures and ways of life, as viewed from the inside outwards’.‘in some deep, almost unfathomable way, they [Deaf people] are linked to each other as citizens of a global Deaf community, that is now coming to style itself as a global Deaf Nation’ (Ladd, 2003: 29, authors’ emphasis added). As this quote implies Deaf people are one example of a community for whom in the terms of Miller (2002: 242) ‘‘the state is no longer the sole frame of citizenship’’. Rather, the notion of Deaf Nation captures the global vision of a common Deaf political identity predicated on sign language. This is based on an affective connection that is established through Deaf people’s shared deep sense of injustice at their experiences, as indigenous people, of marginalisation or assimilation within oralist States (Ladd, 2003) e for Deaf people oralism is the Deaf holocaust e and the uniquely global possibilities of communicating these to each other through gestural language. Ladd (2003: 29e30) explains ‘‘It is from this vista of awareness that Deaf people come to take a global perspective of the scale and magnitude of what has been visited upon them. They see, indeed they know all too well from their own experiences exactly what it feels like for a Deaf person in Russia, the United States, Australia, Japan, Argentina, South Africa, India and China to have undergone this experience. They count up the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions (who is keeping records anyway?) subjected to the oralist regime over that 100 years’’ (Ladd, 2003: 29e30). This recognition that the oppression of Deaf people is a process that is not contained within national boundaries opens up the possibility for a politics that links the sub-national spaces of Deaf clubs and communities in new forms of citizenship practices. In this context Deaf people around the globe are drawing on the discourse of human rights e a non-national frame of reference e to claim the right to have sign languages recognized. While these human rights claims have to be fought through national courts and thus might be seen to represent in the terms of Sassen (2002) denational rather than postnational claims to citizenship, nonetheless they involve transborder political networks and activities, and draw on an authority that transcends nation state boundaries. As we outlined in the previous section Deaf people feel excluded from common culture despite possessing common formal rights because they cannot communicate effectively in oral English e the language of State institutions and civil practices e and because the majority of hearing people cannot communicate in sign language. Cultural pluralists, such as Young (1990) argue that ‘citizenship’ must take account of such social differences and that as such we need a conception of differentiated citizenship that would provide special rights to accommodate particular groups’ needs and practices. In the conclusion we therefore reflect on the implications of this paper for debates about whether language rights, as one such set of ‘special rights’, should be extended to cultural and linguistic minorities to order to facilitate their ability to exercise their citizenship in a substantive sense and achieve a liveable place in society. In doing so, we reflect on the implications of language rights for the creation of multi-cultural states and intercultural citizens and the role of non-national political activism in achieving this. Conclusion: the right to be heard This paper is set within contemporary debates which stress the importance of cultural processes of citizenship (Miller, 2002). Drawing on empirical work with Deaf people about the use

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of British Sign Language it has highlighted the cultural proficiencies necessary to be a citizen. Specifically, in the first section of the paper we have shown that because everyday spaces of the public realm are made and function through sound and language (in terms of both information and communication) Deaf people who have difficulties communicating in spoken and/or written English do not gain understanding about, and experience of, civil and political institutions, and practices within the State through everyday observations and activities. Individuals or groups, such as Deaf people who cannot communicate in the State language, are thus marginalized or estranged from public space and public discourse. The paper then went on to show how the denial of language rights to an indigenous group such as Deaf people in turn undermines their ability to exercise broader rights in terms of political participation, employment and welfare. As such Deaf people experience ‘political depressiveness’ a term coined by Warner (2002: 52) to describe the way that some groups experience a blockage in confidence and optimism in terms of their ability to participate in public. Without the cultural proficiency to communicate in the dominant language of the State linguistic minority groups such as British Sign Language users do not have a liveable sense of citizenship because they are marginalized from the public realm and so lack real political influence and feel emotionally detached from hearing society. In the final section of this paper we examined how the sense of injustice which flows from these experiences mean that growing numbers of D/deaf people no longer share a sense of commitment and responsibility to the State but rather are developing alternative forms of political commitment. While many Deaf people are not involved in the formal political process and formal political institutions and structures they are creating their own form of separatist politics e based around language, not impairment e to address the realities of their everyday lives and lived citizenship. Here, Deaf clubs in particular constitute a counterpublic. They are self organised spaces which are independent from formal frameworks of citizenship with their own interpretations of Deaf interests and needs, and which produce a sense of belonging that compensates for the political powerlessness of Deaf people in hearing society. However, unlike, other oppressed groups who use the space of the margins to stake a public claim for particular rights, for Deaf people these are spaces of withdrawal. This critically exclusive form of politics is positive because it enables D/deaf people to develop a sense of identity, belonging, and pride but it can run the risk of being dangerously insular and exclusionary, and can exacerbate D/deaf people’s socio-economic marginalisation. At the same time the Internet is facilitating a growing transnational Deaf consciousness about the way Deaf people as indigenous groups have been assimilated in or excluded from oral states around the world. The unique possibilities for global communication that gestural languages provide mean that Deaf people are increasingly developing non-state spaces of cultural identity and belonging, and are drawing on a human rights framework e a non-national frame of reference e to claim linguistic rights and linguistic justice. As such the evidence of this paper is that D/deaf people’s language rights need to be translated into wider society where oral languages dominate, so that there are more possibilities for hearing and Deaf people to meet as equals. Without such an advance Deaf people may have full citizenship in the formal sense that they possess the same legal status, rights and duties as hearing people but they will not have citizenship in a substantive sense in terms of their disposition, political influence and lived experience. To achieve liveable citizenship for Deaf people will mean using public funds to promote Deaf people’s language rights. While this may appear to contradict the ethos of citizenship because it involves special treatment for Deaf people rather than treating Deaf and hearing people as equals, Young (1989) argues that ‘differentiated

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citizenship’ is important in a society where some groups are privileged and others oppressed. She argues that the view that citizens as individuals should leave behind their particular affiliations and experiences to adopt a general point of view only reinforces the perspectives and interests of privileged majority. Moreover she argues culturally excluded groups are at a disadvantage in the political process e and therefore we need to provide institutionalized means for the explicit recognition and representation of them. In the case of Deaf people or other cultural and linguistic minorities this might include public funds for language rights. Kloss (1971, 1977) identifies a difference between tolerance oriented and promotion oriented language rights. Tolerance rights are the protections afforded to individuals against government interference in what language they chose to use at home or in other ‘private’ associations such as within their own communities. Promotion oriented rights are the rights that individuals have to use a particular language in public institutions (school, court, public services etc). Here, Kymlicka and Patten (2003) make a distinction between the ways that speakers of particular languages can be accommodated in public institutions. Providing an interpreter or making other such special provisions for people who lack the proficiency to use the majority or dominant language can enable individuals to communicate with public institutions and so access benefits and rights to which they are entitled. However, this norm-and-accommodation model may facilitate communication but it does not give speakers of minority languages more profound rights in terms of the recognition of their cultural identities (Kymlicka & Patten, 2003). This can only be achieved if a language is designated an official language and its users are given rights that provide a degree of equality with the dominant/other official languages regardless of their cultural proficiency in the majority language. This means recognizing the cultural identity of those who use the minority language within public institutions. This is crucial because users of minority languages believe that they have not just a right to maintain their language but also a duty/responsibility to do so in order to preserve their own culture and identity for future generations. Most nation states, however, are reluctant to recognize bi-lingualism or multi-lingualism as rights regarding them instead as pragmatic accommodations (Kymlicka & Patten, 2003). This is because for a state to officially recognize a language it must also acknowledge and accept that it is a multi-cultural state, in other words, it must recognize that the state is not just the possession of the dominant group but belongs equally to all citizens (Kymlicka, 2003). This in turn requires a state to acknowledge historical injustices to different cultural groups, examine public policies and institutions for bias/discrimination and address the way that different linguistic and cultural groups relate to the state. Thus Kymlicka (2003) argues that a truly multi-cultural state must accept that ‘individuals should be able to access state institutions and act as full and equal citizens without having to deny their own identities’. For the UK to become a truly multi(oral/BSL)-cultural state it would mean the language rights of Deaf people would need to be translated into actual use in everyday spaces. This would necessitate promotion oriented rights including resource targeting and symbolic strategies, such as the inclusion of signers at public events and on all television programmes. By increasing the status and use of sign language it would also create employment opportunities for, and the professionalisation of, Deaf sign language users. However, most citizens are ignorant of, and indifferent to, the life of other groups. Relations between majority and minority groups are often tinged with resentment and annoyance (Valentine & McDonald, 2004). As such the majority of hearing people have little awareness of Deaf people, language or culture. To develop intercultural citizens who are not fearful of other cultures but have positive attitudes to diversity, the state would need to promote intercultural skills

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and knowledge between Deaf and hearing people through the education system. This would also open up sign language as a genuine cultural resource for all citizens whether Deaf or hearing (Ladd, 2003) (although as a note of caution is important that in making BSL an official language it is not standardized for hearing people to learn in such a way that the local diversity and richness of the language is lost). The radical implications of developing oral/BSL multi-cultural state mean that within most nation states the emphasis is on tolerance rights rather than promotion rights for Deaf people’s languages. As a result Deaf people are increasingly turning to a non-national human rights framework to try to address the historical injustices towards them as well as addressing universal questions of linguistic justice. If, through such transborder activism and appeals to transnational authority Deaf people are able to achieve linguistic rights e albeit through national courts e then D/deaf and hearing people might begin to meet in public space as equals; or at least for there would be more equal regard between people meeting as inequals, such that D/deaf people might realize their rights to full and effective citizenship. In turn states will have to rethink how they recognize and allocate citizenship in the context of cultural and specifically linguistic difference. References Ahmad, W. I. U., Darr, A., Jones, L., & Nisar, G. (1998). Deafness and ethnicity: Services, policy and politics. Bristol: Policy Press. Barnett, C. (2004). Media, democracy and representation: disembodying the public. In C. Barnett, & M. Low (Eds.), Spaces of democracy (pp. 185e296). London: Sage. Bateman, G. C. (1998). Deaf community and political activism. In I. Parasnis (Ed.), Cultural and language diversity and the deaf experience (pp. 146e159). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bell, D., & Binnie, J. (2000). The sexual citizen. Cambridge: Polity. Blomley, N. (1994). Mobility, empowerment and the rights revolution. Political Geography, 14, 407e422. Corker, M. (1996). Deaf transitions. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Corker, M. (1998). Deaf and disabled or deafness disabled. Buckingham: Open University Press. Delph-Januirek, T. (1999). Sounding gender(ed): vocal performances in English university teaching spaces. Gender, Place and Culture, 6, 137e154. Desforges, L., & Jones, R. (2001). Geographies of languages/languages of geography. Social & Cultural Geography, 2, 261e264. Dolnick, E. (1993). Deafness as culture. The Atlantic(September), 37e53. Duncan, N. (1996). Renegotiating gender and sexuality in public and private places. In N. Duncan (Ed.), Bodyspace: Destabilizing geographies of gender and sexuality (pp. 127e145). London: Routledge. Emerton, R. G. (1998). Marginality, biculturalism, social identity. In I. Parasnis (Ed.), Cultural and language diversity and the deaf experience (pp. 136e145). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forrest, B. (1995). West Hollywood as symbol: the significance of place in the construction of gay identity. Environment and Planning D: society & space, 13, 133e157. Foster, S. (1996). Communication experiences of Deaf people: an ethnographic account. In I. Parasnis (Ed.), Cultural and language diversity and the deaf experience (pp. 117e135). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foster, S., & Holcomb, T. (1990). Hearing-impaired students: a student-teacher-class partnership. In N. Jones (Ed.), Special educational needs review (pp. 152e171). London: Falmer Press. Fraser, N. (1992). Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organisation of experience. New York: Harper and Row. van Gunsteren, H. R. (1998). A theory of citizenship: Organizing plurality in contemporary democracies. Boulder CO: Westview Press. Hale, S. (1997). The treatment of register variation in court interpreting. The Translator, 3, 39e54. Hall, T., & Williamson, H. (1999). Citizenship and community. Leicester: Youth Work Press. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990). Nations and nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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