“Un-Educated to Be Deaf”. Symbolic Exclusion and Normalization of the Implanted Body in Institutional Languages

Abstract

In the context of Italian public policy, the language used in official documents by public administrations and private companies plays a key role in the social construction of deaf/Deaf people, especially where cochlear implantation introduces medicalized framings. Terms such as "handicapped", "disabled", "hearing impaired", or "protected category", frequently found in regional documents, convey an image of the deaf subject as passive and vulnerable, someone to be protected rather than recognized. Through the analysis of two case studies, this paper shows how bureaucratic discourse normalizes implanted deafness while symbolically excluding signing, "culturally Deaf", or non-medicalized subjectivities. Drawing on Judith Butler's notion of "precariousness", Brigitte Vasallo's critique of inclusive rhetoric and Irene W. Leigh's theory of Deaf identities, the article denounces institutional language education as a form of miseducation that enforces normalization, control, and marginalization. True inclusion requires unlearning such language and co-constructing new symbolic frames with Deaf/deaf communities.