| | Political correctness sometimes swings in weird ways. A while ago we got stuck with "hearing impaired" by those who couldn't bear the word "DEAF" for some kooky reason. "Hard of hearing" was the first euphemism, since nearly everybody was using it when they meant DEAF as in deaf as a post. Let us pick that one apart a minute to see why we oppose it. Hard as in struggling, to hear? Nope. Hard as in calcified, leathery, solidified, petrified? Nope. Our problem is the word hearing. We don't have much to do with hearing nor do we count it as a daily life activity. So it is with "hearing impaired". We aren't impaired as people, and to be called hearing impaired when we don't have or use hearing to begin with is kinda silly. Would one say we were flying-impaired, aquatic-impaired, or even invisible-impaired? What we don't have, isn't broken. Both imply a quality of defectiveness. Both imply that hearing is a standard of humanity, and anything less is LESS. So in this category we have hearing-disabled, defective hearing, hearing loss, and hearing aids. Side note on hearing-disabled: if one remembers the definition of disabled in computer programming, a function that is turned off. It can be permanently or temporarily deactivated, but is still present. All the components are there. This is different from the word disability as more commonly used. Still, for general use, it carries the connotation of "broken" which we want to get away from.
Just about the only word left is DEAF. Yet hearing people have problems with this word. Something about it raises their hackles, makes them squirm, and they grapple for a better-sounding euphemism. To them, it is an insult, a barb implying unresponsiveness, deadness and impenetrability, if not outright density. Well, great to have that out in the open. What words are better? A quick look in the thesaurus shows that there aren't many options. A look in the Babelfish foreign language translator for the words deaf, hard of hearing, hearing impaired and silent yields: doof, doofenstommen, gehörlosen, sordomudo, surdus, sourd, audition-altéré, silencieux, sourd et sourd-muet, taub, Hörfähigkeit-gehindert, leise, taub und stumm, sordo, udienza-alterato, silenzioso.
As with all borrowed words in English, a new word has to have a certain attractiveness, an immediate recognition of being a better description than our English word. "Culture", "Society" and "Seeing people" have surfaced in the past. Here are a few more to try out: "visual culture;" "dysacusis" or "anacusis", medically based words meaning impaired or lacking hearing; and "silent society". Can readers add to the list and start tossing them around to see what fits? |
