Being Understood

Reviews / Votes

What does it mean to be understood as a deaf person? Kristin Snoddon asks from the borderlands of lived experience: deaf, deafblind and hard of hearing people as writers, song signers, interpreters, dancers, musicians. By illuminating deaf worlds of (not) understanding and (not) being understood, layers of alienation and shame are reshaped into sites of linguistic flourishing. * Gabrielle Hodge, University of Edinburgh, UK * This powerfully written book offers intimate portraits and generative analyses of less-attended-to deaf practices such as writing, music, and translation in Canada and Trinidad and Tobago. Grounded in disabled feminist methodologies, Snoddon opens up critical and consequential conversations between linguistics, deaf studies, and philosophy. * E. Mara Green, Barnard College, Columbia University, USA * A masterfully rich meditation on the diversity of the linguistic human experience and expression, which skillfully explores the ethics, politics and policy of language and linguistic alterity in a grounded and deeply humane manner. By closely interrogating the link between knowledge work and self-knowledge, this important book makes a unique and distinct contribution to a trans- and interdisciplinary understanding of the social philosophy of language, and its fundamental challenges, ambiguities and hopes. * Yael Peled, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany *