Linguistic care work as resistance: crip linguistics and deaf immigrants

Abstract

Jon Henner and Octavian Robinson's (Henner, J., & Robinson, O. (2023). Unsettling languages, unruly Bodyminds: A Crip linguistics manifesto. Journal of Critical Study of Communication and Disability, 1, 7-37. https://doi.org/10.48516/jcscd_2023vol1iss1.4) theoretical framework, Crip Linguistics, has deeply influenced and informed my ethnographic research examining the experiences of adult deaf immigrants in the northeast United States. Through approximately 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork involving participant observation in the Deaf Services department of a nonprofit organization and in-depth, semistructured interviews with deaf immigrants, this research began as an investigation of how the intersection of deafness and immigration produces linguistic vulnerabilities. Crip Linguistics has been crucial to my analysis and understanding of deaf immigrant language practices, not as linguistically impoverished as perceived by many, but as varied, flexible, and collaborative. I argue that deaf immigrants' ability to navigate a multitude of languages and language modalities as they move through their daily lives demonstrates an immense degree of linguistic proficiency that is often overlooked, and their engagement in practices of "linguistic care work" challenges an ableist and exclusionary U.S. immigration regime.