Being Understood

Deaf Interpreters, Embodied Language and Relationality

Kristin Snoddon

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Hardback

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English

Multilingual Matters
11 November 2025

Philosophy of language; Sociolinguistics

Series: Critical Language and Literacy Studies

Experiences of not understanding and not being understood during interactions are a pervasive aspect of life for many deaf people, so ensuring understanding becomes a moral imperative in deaf worlds and part of deaf ontologies. Through a series of linked applied linguistics studies regarding the primacy of text, signing songs, the mediation practices of deaf interpreters and Caribbean deaf epistemologies of language and understanding, this book outlines theoretical and methodological approaches to analyzing deaf people’s experiences of understanding and being understood. These are grounded in a Continental philosophy of language and qualitative methods including autoethnography, interpretative interviews and phenomenology. The book explores issues surrounding linguistic and semiotic repertoires; access and affordances; orientation, sociality and power; and mediated communication. Ultimately, it reveals both the workings of epistemic injustice related to deaf signers and ways of understanding and being understood that extend beyond named languages.

By: Kristin Snoddon
Imprint: Multilingual Matters
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 148mm, Spine: 13mm
Weight: 360g
ISBN: 9781788921176
ISBN 10: 1788921178
Series: Critical Language and Literacy Studies
Pages: 157
Publication Date: 11 November 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Foreword Introduction: Understanding, Difference and Relationality in Methodology Part I: Linguistic Flourishing Chapter 1. Being a Deaf Scholar: Writing as Being Chapter 2. Signing Songs and the Openings of Semiotic Repertoires Part II: Deaf Interpreters and Understanding Chapter 3. Sign Language Ideologies and the Ethics of Relationality Chapter 4. Brokering Understanding: Deaf Interpreters’ Role and Practice Part III: Caribbean Deaf Epistemologies of Language and Understanding Chapter 5. A Phenomenology of Deaf People’s Experiences of Understanding and Music at Trinidad Carnival Chapter 6. Toward a Caribbean Deaf Queer Phenomenology Conclusion

Kristin Snoddon is a Professor in the School of Early Childhood Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. She is co-editor of Critical Perspectives on Plurilingualism in Deaf Education (with Joanne C. Weber, Multilingual Matters, 2021) and Sign Language Ideologies in Practice (with Annelies Kusters, Mara Green and Erin Moriarty, Mouton De Gruyter, 2020).

Reviews for Being Understood: Deaf Interpreters, Embodied Language and Relationality

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 *