ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author poses a number of challenges to and offer alternative formulations of the concept of identity within the framework of structuration theory. To analyse the institutional forms through which signification is organised is to analyse symbol orders and modes of discourse; such an analysis must, however, also consider how symbol orders and modes of discourse interconnect with forms of domination and legitimation. The chapter capitalise 'Deaf' and 'Deafness' to remind readers that Deaf-Hearing encounters expose political, not merely communicative, differences. Deaf communication is both oral and visual. In the history of language training for Deaf people there has been a division between the advocacy of oralist methods and the advocacy of manualist methods. The day-to-day routines of the lived-in-world of modernity that are reproduced by 'practical consciousness' do not provide modes of orientation that answer existential questions of Deafness.
