A Journey Into The Death World Analysis

Prior to reading chapter three in the text A Journey into the Death World, I always thought that Deaf babies had a more difficult time growing up in terms of their developmental milestones. Reading this chapter I found out that there are more similarities than differences among them and their hearing counterparts. They went through the normal babbling sounds and other processes that the hearing ones went through. As hearing people we all tend to think that there is something wrong with a child that is Deaf, and they need fixing. The only disadvantage in my opinion that a Deaf child has is when he or she is born to a hearing family is the fact that it takes longer for the child to learn ASL; because the parents most of the times used gestures in order to communicate with them. As we read in chapter 2 Deaf parents can immediately communicate with their children. In Chapter one for example, Jake had an advantage over Laurel and the others because his parents were Deaf so he learned ASL at an early age compared to the others who did much later in life. One thing that amazed me is when the author mentioned that a Deaf child can sign pronouns for all the three persons by age two. I found that really fascinating because people who speak English as an adult has problems with the three persons pronouns and for a Deaf child do be able to sign them is incredible. In my opinion they have an advantage over the hearing counterparts. This in another point where I feel that there is no reason why a child who was born Deaf, should not be able to live a productive life as long as the parents know where to find the necessary resources for that child to thrive. I have to agree with the author when he mentioned that ASL is a language because if it was not it would not be difficult. There is proper sentence structure like any other language with subject and verb agreement. I always thought of sign language of being pictorial, which would make it easy to learn because the all the individual was required to do was to point or draw an object and it would allow others to understand the message that was being conveyed. I got a rude …show more content…
The Deaf -World sees culture as very important to what they believe and they expect members of the community to be informed of what their culture entails. Learning what the Deaf World recognizes as a significant part of their culture was very informative. As a member of the Deaf World individuals are supposed to be knowledgeable of the culture which includes: the hours of the death club, the names of important Deaf leaders, which includes the presidents of various Deaf associations in the particular state, how to use the telephone relay service, major figures in the American Deaf history, and how to manage in various trying situations with people. I thought the Deaf Club was a place where Deaf people came to socialize with each other in an informal manner. I can certainly understand the reason why they want individuals to have information on these various topics because being in a club is not just for social events. Individuals should be informed on what their clubs represents so that he or she will be able to defend his or her