Deaf linguist drives acceptance of sign language
发布日期:[2021-03-29]
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With her chant of "Nothing about us, without us", a disability empowerment slogan, Zheng Xuan, a deaf expert on Chinese Sign Language, finds herself almost alone.


For generations, linguistic research into CSL has been dominated by people with unimpaired hearing.


"I am one of a very small number of deaf people in the field," said Zheng, a specialist in deaf education at Beijing Normal University, China's top teacher training college.


In 2016, a Confucius Institute in Minnesota, United States, wanted to recruit deaf Chinese teachers for an exchange program. As someone who could use spoken Mandarin and English and was also a longtime user of CSL, the 40-year-old had no rivals.


The stigma attached to using sign language-a telltale sign of hearing loss-has led many high-achieving deaf people to learn oral languages.