ABSTRACT
Through a critical disability lens, we theorize epistemic justice in the field of signed language interpretation. Incidences of often overlooked epistemic injustice refract, reproduce, and reflect the ethics, politics, and ideologies that shape signed language interpreting as a social institution. Signed language interpreting, in collusion with broader social systems, confers the authority of knowledge and expertise to the apparently abled person (the interpreter). Their authority is compounded and amplified if they occupy academic positions as trainers, teachers, and researchers. Prevailing practices, knowledges, and beliefs in signed language interpretation clash with the lived knowledge and experiences of signing deaf people. Deaf people argue that they are original language brokers because brokering is an intrinsic part of deaf people’s linguistic practices. Language brokering is a form of linguistic care work. Over the last six decades, the relationship between non-deaf interpreters and deaf people has become a site of contestation regarding knowledge, authority, and expertise.
