60 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
The research data were generated by videotaped ethnographic interviews in
Flemish Sign Language with 15 Flemish deaf role models. The in-depth inter-
views took a maximum of 3 hours each and followed a list of set questions, such
as, What/who has been important in your deaf empowerment? What is positive?
What is negative? Do you prefer the present or the past? Did you go abroad and
meet international deaf people? Did that change something? Can you describe what
happened? you are active—what does that mean for you? What is important for
other deaf people to know? What is important for hearing people to know?
To ensure respondent validation (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994), the emergent
themes, interrelations, and generalizations were discussed with the participants
to determine that my findings seemed plausible from their perspective (Stebbins,
2001). This research was discussed in a regional deaf club as well as in meetings with
smaller groups of participants at my home.
Grounded analysis is a process wherein “ideas and recommendations which the re-
search develops and makes emerge from the data are grounded in what the key partic-
ipants have contributed through their worlds and experiences” (Goodley, Lawthom,
Clough, & Moore, 2004, p.119). I coded my research data into categories—i.e., wak-
ing up, circle of deaf empowerment, deaf cultural rhetoric, and global encounters—
and identified relationships among those categories; for example, Flemish deaf peo-
ple wake up through informal exchanges of deaf cultural rhetoric in global encounters
with international empowered deaf people (Breivik, Haualand, & Solvang, 2002;
Murray, 2008. That led to tentative generalizations and theory development (Leedy
& ormrod, 2003; Stebbins, 2001).
The study of 15 deaf role models led to the emergence of three categories dis-
tinguishing different factors leading to the empowerment of the Flemish deaf
community. In regard to the first stage and earliest time frame (early 1990s), these
individuals mentioned participating in a deaf awareness course, having contacts
with international empowered deaf people, and visiting ideal deaf places, or deaf
dream worlds.
Concerning the second stage (mid-1990s), Flemish deaf leaders mentioned
being empowered by hearing sign language researchers and their information. In
the third stage, the Flemish deaf community was able to empower its own people
through deaf activism and collaboration with hearing allies, a movement that began
in the second half of the 1990s and is still going on today (De Clerck, 2005, also see
Chapter 6).^3 In addition, over the course of my research, interviews I conducted
in the 2000s with young deaf people studying abroad in barrier-free environments
revealed instances of empowerment similar to those experienced by deaf people
during short trips in the 1990s.
This chapter explores the first stage of Flemish deaf empowerment and the con-
cepts of visiting deaf dream worlds and global deaf encounters that emerged from the
data and categorization of these data (Stebbins, 2001; Strauss & Corbin, 1990).- This chapter was originally written in 2006 and published in 2007 as an article; the topic of
emancipation in the Flemish deaf community is further explored in Chapter 6 in relation to the
dialogue in Flemish Deaf Parliament, which took place in 2014.