「你是外國人嗎？」：台灣聽障者的口音與身份誤認經驗

Abstract

口語族聽障者使用的華語口語會帶有所謂的「聽損口音」；然而，由於聽人對於聽損口音缺乏認識，在日常生活中聽見聽損口音時，常會誤以為對方是外國人。在這種情況下，聽障者遊走於兩組身份之間：作為聽人的外國人，以及作為聽障者的台灣人。本文混合量化分析與敘事分析討論台灣成人聽障者如何敘說自身被誤認為外國人的經驗。量化資料發現當研究者主動誘發受訪者討論身份誤認議題時，約有74%的聽障者有被誤認為外國人的經驗；然而，在研究者未主動提及此議題時，只有約44%的聽障者在討論障礙經驗時主動提及被誤認經驗，而且全為女性。透過敘事分析，本文發現聽障女性面對被誤認經驗時，以不同敘說方式將誤認經驗回饋到自身對障礙者身份的理解，而相較之下聽障男性傾向孤立身份誤認經驗於障礙身份敘事之外。本研究指出，身份誤認過程對於一些聽損受訪者而言具有直接的社會心理傷害，身份誤認暗示了自身聽力障礙之「嚴重」體現在自身口語表達上，尤其是當被誤認的國族身份係在台灣社會有時被負面看待者（如：東南亞、中國）；相較之下，有的受訪者則是視情況佯裝為外國人，如果被誤認的國族身份具有某種種族化的文化優越性（如：日本、韓國）。

Orally educated deaf people speak Mandarin with the so-called "deaf accents". Yet, hearing people are usually ignorant of deaf accents and often misrecognize deaf accents as foreign accents. Mistaken for foreigners, deaf people are faced with two competing identities - hearing foreigners and deaf Taiwanese. Adopting mixed methods, this article explores how Taiwanese deaf adults discuss their experiences being misidentified as foreigners. Quantitative analysis shows that around 74% of deaf people have experiences of identity misrecognition when the researcher elicits identity misidentification narratives from them; however, when the researcher does not mention this issue, only around 44% of the participants mention such experiences in their narratives of disability, all of whom are women. Narrative analysis shows that deaf women relate identity misrecognition back to their self-conception of being disabled, and in contrast, deaf men tend to disconnect such experiences from disability. The current study reveals that identity misrecognition can be socio-psychologically harmful to some deaf women because the act of misidentification per se highlights how the 'severity' of hearing loss is to them, especially when they are mistaken for persons from nations whom the mainstream Taiwanese society express negative attitudes towards (e.g., Southeast Asians, PRC Chinese); in contrast, some deaf women, depending on the situation, may pretend to be foreigners if the misperceived nationality is associated with a certain racialized cultural prestige (e.g., Japanese or Koreans).