Representations of Sound in American Deaf Literature

Abstract

Sound plays a prominent role in narrative description of characters and environs in mainstream American literature. A review of American Deaf literature shows that the representations of sound held for deaf writers are in extensional and oppositional terms. American deaf writers, in their descriptions of entities, characters, functions, and settings, have created different representations of sound. In American Deaf literature, the representations of sound are filled with altered-acoustic and extra-acoustic images of sounds. The representations reflect psychophysiological experiences that presume the existence of an acoustic world by American deaf and hard-of-hearing writers, independent of the age when their hearing was lost, and changes in American Deaf culture.