Article

Frozen ecstasy: visualizing hearing in marketing materials for cochlear implants

Author:

Sean ZdenekAuthors Info & Claims

SIGDOC '07: Proceedings of the 25th annual ACM international conference on Design of communication

Pages 241 - 248

https://doi.org/10.1145/1297144.1297198

Published: 22 October 2007 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper, I analyze marketing materials - principally brochures - from two cochlear implant manufacturers. Cochlear implants occupy a central place in the debates over deafness. Is deafness merely a medical condition that prevents deaf people from fully participating in the (hearing) society at large? Or is Deafness (written with a capital D) the moniker of a minority group, one with its own distinct language (e.g. American Sign Language), history, culture, and values, and thus deserving of the same civil rights afforded to other linguistic minorities? Because implants promise to eradicate deafness, they also threaten to undermine the claims of some deaf people to self-realization as members of a linguistic minority group. Not surprisingly, the marketing materials embrace a medical model of deafness as a stigmatizing deficit to be fixed. But they do so by downplaying the implant's uncertainty (i.e. implants to date can not deliver on the promise to cure deafness for all) and by ignoring the contests within the Deaf community over the place of implants in the lives of d/Deaf people.

References

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Baynton, Douglas (1996) Forbidden Signs: American Culture and the Campaign Against Sign Language. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.

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Branson, Jan & Don Miller. 2002. Damned for Their Difference: The Cultural Construction of Deaf People as Disabled. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press

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Brueggemann, Brenda (1999) Lend Me Your Ear: Rhetorical Constructions of Deafness. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press.

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Brueggemann, Brenda (2006) "Interlude 1: On (Almost) Passing" in L. Davis (ed.) The Disability Studies Reader (pp. 321--330). New York: Routledge.

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Cochlear implant graphic. Official website of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). Retrieved 17 August 2007. http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/ear_coch_img.htm

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"Cochlear implants" (2006) Official website of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). NIH Publication No. 00-4798. Retrieved 17 August 2007. http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/coch.asp.

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"Cochlear implants FAQ" (n.d.) Official website of The National Association of the Deaf (NAD). Retrieved 17 August 2007. http://www.nad.org/site/pp.asp?c=foINKQMBF&b=399061.

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Chorost, Michael (2005) Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

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Bolt, Andrew (2002, March 25). "Deaf to oppression." Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia). Opinion, 19.

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"FDA Public Health Notification: Continued Risk of Bacterial Meningitis in Children with Cochlear Implants with a Positioner Beyond Twenty-Four Months Post-Implantation" (2006, February 6). Official website of U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved 17 August 2007. http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/safety/020606-cochlear.html.

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Gonsoulin, Thomas P. (2001) "Cochlear implant/Deaf World dispute: Different bottom elephants." Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery 125:5. 552--556.

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Griffin, Kawanza (2003, August 4) "Cochlear implants found to raise meningitis risk." Kawanza Griffin. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 04G.

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Davis, Vincent T. (2004, August 11) "Hers is resounding joy; 'Miracle' cochlear implant operation has opened world for 7-year-old girl." San Antonio Express-News. Metro, 1B.

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Hintermair, Manfred & John A. Albertini (2005) "Ethics, deafness, and new medical technologies". Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 10:2. 184--192

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Lane, Harlan (1999) The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community. 2nd ed. San Diego, Calif.: DawnSignPress.

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NAD Position Statement on Cochlear Implants (2000) Official website of The National Association of the Deaf (NAD). Retrieved 17 August 2007. http://www.nad.org/site/pp.asp?c=foINKQMBF&b=138140.

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Padden, Carol & Tom Humphries (2005) Inside Deaf Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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Sparrow, Robert (2005) "Defending Deaf Culture: The Case for Cochlear Implants." The Journal of Political Philosophy 13:2. 135--152.

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"The Death of Deafness" (2000, March/April). Part 1. Hearing Health. 25--39.

[21]

Zdenek, Sean (solicited) "Bearing Witness to a Miracle: Cochlear Implants, News Discourse, and the Public Fascination with Curing Deafness," in B. Johnstone & C. Eisenhart (eds) Rhetoric in Detail: Discourse Analysis of Rhetorical Talk and Text.

Cited By

Kim LLane LStaggers JRichards DAmidon TPflugfelder E(2019)Dynamic design for technical communicationProceedings of the 37th ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication10.1145/3328020.3353929(1-7)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3328020.3353929
Mogull SBalzhiser D(2015)Pharmaceutical companies are writing the script for health consumerismCommunication Design Quarterly10.1145/2826972.28269763:4(35-49)Online publication date: 17-Sep-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2826972.2826976
Krutz DMeneely AMalachowsky S(2015)An insider threat activity in a software security courseProceedings of the 2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2015.7344087(1-6)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/FIE.2015.7344087

Index Terms

Frozen ecstasy: visualizing hearing in marketing materials for cochlear implants
1. Applied computing
  1. Document management and text processing
    1. Document capture
      1. Document analysis
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing profession
      1. Assistive technologies
  2. User characteristics
    1. People with disabilities

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cover image ACM Conferences

SIGDOC '07: Proceedings of the 25th annual ACM international conference on Design of communication

October 2007

286 pages

ISBN:9781595935885

DOI:10.1145/1297144

General Chair:
David Novick
The University of Texas at El Paso, TX
,
Program Chair:
Clay Spinuzzi
The University of Texas at Austin, TX

Copyright © 2007 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 22 October 2007

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SIGDOC07: The 25th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication

October 22 - 24, 2007

Texas, El Paso, USA

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Cited By

Kim LLane LStaggers JRichards DAmidon TPflugfelder E(2019)Dynamic design for technical communicationProceedings of the 37th ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication10.1145/3328020.3353929(1-7)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3328020.3353929
Mogull SBalzhiser D(2015)Pharmaceutical companies are writing the script for health consumerismCommunication Design Quarterly10.1145/2826972.28269763:4(35-49)Online publication date: 17-Sep-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2826972.2826976
Krutz DMeneely AMalachowsky S(2015)An insider threat activity in a software security courseProceedings of the 2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2015.7344087(1-6)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/FIE.2015.7344087

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