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00:12:09
00:14:31
00:12:09
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Transcription: [00:12:09]
{SPEAKER name="Ella Mae Lentz/Shirley Schultz (interpreter)"}
OK. I have a list of things here. Take a look. I know it's hard to read but I'll sign it again.
[00:12:21]
These are statements that I've already heard people say about us and our language. Deaf people want to be hearing. Deaf people read Braille. Deaf people are deaf psychologically but not physically.
[00:12:38]
Can't talk - deaf people can't talk or deaf people are skilled lip readers. Deaf people have no sense of humor.

[00:12:48]
Uh, sign language. Sign language is universal.

[00:12:51]
Sign language is not a true language. Sign language is from English.
[00:12:56]

That's uh, those are very common statements and you can even see among those statements some contradictions.
[00:13:03]

Before I talk about those, I'd like to discuss the deaf group itself. Deaf people can be, Deafness can be compared with a coin.
[00:13:14]

You know coins have a head and a tail, two sides. Okay. You can't look at one side and forget the other side, can you?
[00:13:27]

The other side and this side are occurring at the same time. Both exist in the same time. It's the same with deafness. Deafness, deaf people can look at themselves as something missing, something that needs to be improved.
[00:13:44]

Or some people looked upon deafness as having something special like sign language and its own culture. So there are two sides there.
[00:13:54]
When you look at the deaf as something, as lacking something, you look at it with a clinical, pathological view.
[00:14:03]
It means that you look, you see something missing and you have to support it with hearing aids or with speech lessons, and with English, trying to make them become quote unquote normal, like other Americans to be specific.
[00:14:24]
If you see people as a group of people with their own language, with their own culture, you're looking at them from a cultural point of view.
[00:14:32]


Transcription Notes:
Speaker - Ella Mae Lentz was introduced on Page 4.