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In the past 25 years, a radically new understanding of Deafl people has appeared. This new understanding constitutes what Kuhn (1970) called a paradigm shift. The old and still dominant understanding of deaf people is that they have an unfortunate disability. For those unacquainted with the changes that have occurred in the consciousness of Deaf people (Padden & Humphries, 1988), this way of viewing deaf people makes sense. Most hearing people think of deafness as a terrible tragedy. It is common and usual to pity deaf people. Baker and Cokely (1980) called this viewpoint the medical-patlwlogical model. In recent years, the Deaf community has put forward a fundamentally different model.
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