The DOI matches its Crossref record.
W(h)ither the Deaf Community? Population, Genetics, and the Future of Australian Sign Language
Abstract
According to enrollments in schools for the deaf and data from the national census and neonatal hearing screening programs, the incidence of severe and profound childhood deafness in Australia is, and has been, less than commonly assumed. Factors implicated include improved medical care, mainstreaming, cochlear implants, and genetic science. Data for the United States, Britain, and other developed countries seem consistent with those for Australia. Declining prevalence and incidence rates have immediate implications for sign-based education, teacher-of-the-deaf training programs, and educational interpreting. There are also serious consequences for research, documentation, and teaching regarding Australian Sign Language (Auslan), and for the future viability of Auslan. Prompt action is essential if a credible corpus of Auslan is to be collected as the basis for a valid and verifiable description of one of the few native sign languages in the world with significant attested historical depth.
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Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Based on his research in Australia, Trevor Johnston (2004) predicts that the Deaf, signing community in that country won’t exist in its current, viable state within a span of 20 to 30 years.”
From Reframing: From Hearing Loss to Deaf Gain (2009) · cites this paper as Johnston, 2004
In the citing paper
“The frame of normalcy opens up the possibility, even the inevitability, of eliminating deaf people. Genetic tests and technology are seen as tools to eliminate deafness from the face of the earth—or at least to shrink the Deaf population to the point where the signing community is no longer viable (Johnston, 2004, p. 165).”
From Reframing: From Hearing Loss to Deaf Gain (2009) · cites this paper as Johnston, 2004
Citations
Cited by
Reframing: From Hearing Loss to Deaf Gain
Bauman, D. H., & Murray, J. (2009) · Deaf Studies Digital Journal · doi:10.3998/15499139.0001.019 · Cited by 49
Metadata
- Authors
- Johnston, T. A.
- Affiliations
- NextSense (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Johnston, Trevor A
- ORCID
- Johnston, Trevor A
- Venue
- American Annals of the Deaf
- Publisher
- Project MUSE
- Published
- 2004-03
- Volume
- 148
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 358-375
- ISSN
- 0002-726X (ISSN-L)
- 1543-0375
- OpenAlex
- W1969754379
- Cited by
- 150
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 17.21
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- American annals of the deaf (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Hearing Impairment and Communication
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Speech and Hearing › Hearing Loss and Rehabilitation
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Multilingual Education and Policy
- Keywords
- Australian Sign Language, Auslan, deaf community, cochlear implants, mainstreaming, sign language education, educational interpreting, sign language documentation, sign language corpus
- MeSH terms
- Australia, Child, Cochlear Implants, Deafness, Education, Special, Female, Genetic Testing, Humans, Infant, Newborn, Obstetric Labor, Premature, Mainstreaming, Education, Male, Pregnancy, Risk Factors, Rubella, Sign Language, Incidence, Prevalence, Neonatal Screening
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: W(h)ither the Deaf Community? Population, Genetics, and the Future of Australian Sign Language. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1353/aad.2004.0004
- The paper
- Johnston, T. A. (2004). W(h)ither the Deaf Community? Population, Genetics, and the Future of Australian Sign Language. American Annals of the Deaf. https://doi.org/10.1353/aad.2004.0004
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
