People with extreme hearing loss may communicate through sign languages. Sign languages convey meaning through manual communication and body language instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns. This involves the simultaneous combination of hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to express a speaker's thoughts. "Sign languages are based on the idea that vision is the most useful tool a deaf person has to communicate and receive information". Deaf culture refers to a tight-knit cultural group of people whose primary language is signed, and who practice social and cultural norms which are distinct from those of the surrounding hearing community. This community does not automatically include all those who are clinically or legally deaf, nor does it exclude every hearing person. According to Baker and Padden, it includes any person or persons who "identifies him/herself as a member of the Deaf community, and other members accept that person as a part of the community," an example being children of deaf adults with normal hearing ability. It includes the set of social beliefs, behaviors, art, literary traditions, history, values, and shared institutions of communities that are influenced by deafness and which use sign languages as the main means of communication. Members of the Deaf community tend to view deafness as a difference in human experience rather than a disability or disease. When used as a cultural label especially within the culture, the word deaf is often written with a capital D and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. When used as a label for the audiological condition, it is written with a lower case d.
Family The communication limitations between people who are deaf and their hearing family members can often cause difficulties in family relationships, and affect the strength of relationships among individual family members. It was found that most people who are deaf have hearing parents, which means that the channel that the child and parents communicate through can be very different, often affecting their relationship in a negative way. If a parent communicates best verbally, and their child communicates best using sign language, this could result in ineffective communication between parents and children. Ineffective communication can potentially lead to fights caused by misunderstanding, less willingness to talk about life events and issues, and an overall weaker relationship. Even if individuals in the family made an effort to learn deaf communication techniques such as sign language, a deaf family member often will feel excluded from casual banter; such as the exchange of daily events and news at the dinner table. It is often difficult for people who are deaf to follow these conversations due to the fast-paced and overlapping nature of these exchanges. This can cause a deaf individual to become frustrated and take part in less family conversations. This can potentially result in weaker relationships between the hearing individual and their immediate family members. This communication barrier can have a particularly negative effect on relationships with extended family members as well. Communication between a deaf individual and their extended family members can be very difficult due to the gap in verbal and non-verbal communication. This can cause the individuals to feel frustrated and unwilling to put effort into communicating effectively. The lack of effort put into communicating can result in anger, miscommunication, and unwillingness to build a strong relationship.
Community
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