A Focus group with three women in Taiwan with post-lingual hearing loss:
- Xiao-kun: Uses both CI and Hearing Aid (HA); the primary driver of the CI discourse.
- Shu-lun & Sakura: Bilateral HA users (no CI)

Study Participants

Research Question:
- Need to understand how positive attitudes/satisfaction are socially constructed in everyday interaction.

Analysis:
- Examining how the participants talk about and compare their devices.

Research Question and Analysis

- Study Participants
- Research Question and Analysis

State University of New York at Binghamton

In Chapter 7, Tsung-Lun Alan Wan uses Critical Discursive Psychology to analyze how Hard of Hearing adults in Taiwan construct Cochlear Implants (CIs) as superior to Hearing Aids (HAs). The author demonstrates that participants frame HAs as shameful symbols of disability, while positioning CIs as desirable technologies that confer an "abled" identity. Wan argues that this discourse establishes a binary between the "abled" CI user and "disabled" HA user, ultimately reinforcing the ideology of audism and the medical model of disability.

Chapter 7: Formulating (Dis)Ability

Lester, J. N. (Ed.). (2021). Discursive Psychology and Disability. Palgrave Studies in Discursive Psychology. Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Reference For: Discursive Psychology and Disability

- The Conflict: Deaf Studies and Medicalized Perspectives on CIs and HAs
- Methodology of Critical Discursive Psychology

Context & Theoretical Framework

Study Design

- The Hearing Aid (HA) Construction
- The Cochlear Implant (CI) Construction

Findings: Constructing the Device Binary

- Material Performance: Satisfaction is stabilized not just through words, but physical acts.
- Hierarchy reinforcement

Findings: Performing Normalization

- Ambivalent Medicalization
- Reproducing Audism

Discussion and Conclusions

Kerschbaum uses these studies to illustrate how the material world actively participates in constructing disability. She highlights Wan’s analysis in chapter 7, where hearing assistive devices and cochlear implants fundamentally shape the nature of social interactions, while noting that Gabriel and Kelley demonstrate in chapter 6 how "invisible" disabilities like dyslexia become visible through material factors such as classroom behaviors, time constraints, and affective responses like frustration. Furthermore, she points to Stinesen et al.’s findings in chapter 4, observing that patients distinguish between a "willing mind" and a "disabled body," a separation enforced by the embodied experience of pain preventing physical action.

Evidence from Reviewed Chapters

The discursive construction of disability is deeply influenced by the relationships between interlocutors, noting that these constructions often shift based on who is present in the interaction. Kerschbaum points to Gabriel and Kelley’s study in chapter 6, observing that the student Ethan used his actual relationships with other dyslexic people to support the portrayal of his own experience. Furthermore, she references Wan’s analysis of Xiao-kun in chapter 7, who constructed "abled-ness" and "disabled-ness" differently regarding her hearing aid—which was associated with shame—versus her cochlear implant. However, Kerschbaum emphasizes that this specific construction was not shared uniformly by the other hard-of-hearing women participating in the conversation.

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