Language in Medical Worlds: Hearing Technology for Deaf Jordanian Children

Bringing together medical and linguistic anthropology, I examine the provision of hearing technology, such as cochlear implants, to deaf Jordanian children, a project animated by an imperative to make deaf children speak. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork at a cochlear implantation initiative and an audiology department in Amman, I argue that this imperative must be understood in relation to anxieties about the status of Arabic in Jordan and the historical value of orality in the Middle East. This case shows that more attention must be paid to the role of language ideologies in co-constituting medical encounters between clinicians, parents, and patients.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Loh, Yui Leh Timothy

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Helmreich, Stefan

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright retained by author(s)

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/147236

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/147236