Structural Audism and Linguistic Normalization Regimes: A Critical Analysis of the Production of the Deaf Subject

Abstract

This article develops a theoretical analysis of the concept of structural audism and its relationship with linguistic normalization regimes that shape the production of knowledge about language and deafness. Drawing on contributions from social philosophy and critical language studies, particularly Foucauldian reflections on normalization, subject production, and regimes of truth, the study examines how certain linguistic theories and educational practices have historically established hearing and orality as normative parameters of language. In this context, it is argued that structural audism should not be understood merely as discriminatory attitudes directed toward deaf people, but as an epistemological and institutional dispositif that organizes how language is conceived, taught, and evaluated. From this perspective, the article discusses how such normalization regimes participate in the production of the deaf subject as a linguistic difference frequently interpreted through the logic of deficiency or deficit. It concludes that problematizing structural audism shifts the debate from the sphere of individual discrimination to the analysis of knowledge structures that sustain particular conceptions of language, competence, and linguistic normality, opening possibilities for approaches more attentive to linguistic and sensory diversity.