What does audism mean?
Audism is discrimination or prejudice against deaf and hard-of-hearing people, grounded in the assumption that hearing and speech are inherently superior to deafness and signed communication. Coined by American Deaf scholar Tom Humphries in the 1970s, the word fills the same role in Deaf studies that racism and sexism occupy in other civil-rights contexts: it names not just personal bigotry but also institutional practices, such as denying access to sign language interpreters, excluding deaf children from bilingual education, or treating cochlear implantation as the only acceptable outcome. Audism can be overt or subtle, deliberate or unexamined, and scholars often describe it as systemic because it is embedded in laws, schools, workplaces, and medical practice. Though still relatively unfamiliar outside specialist circles, it is increasingly used in advocacy, journalism, and academic literature, and understanding it offers insight into how linguistic and cultural minorities experience marginalisation.
nounDiscrimination or prejudice against deaf and hard-of-hearing people, typically based on the assumption that hearing ways of living and communicating are superior to deaf ones.
- Discrimination or prejudice against deaf and hard-of-hearing people, based on an assumed superiority of hearing.
"The university's refusal to provide interpreters was widely condemned as a clear case of audism."
"Campaigners argued that requiring spoken interviews without interpreters amounted to audism in hiring."
"Her research examines how audism is embedded in schools that forbid sign language."
Rarely used in the plural; the noun is almost always treated as uncountable, referring to the phenomenon of anti-deaf discrimination as a whole.
"The anthology traces different manifestations of audism across a century of education policy."
The word audism was coined in the 1970s by Deaf scholar Tom Humphries to name something society had long practised but never had a word for.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of audism
The term audism was coined in the mid-1970s by Tom Humphries, an American Deaf scholar, in his doctoral work on Deaf education, drawing on the Latin root audire ('to hear') combined with the suffix -ism, which denotes systems of belief or discrimination. It was formed deliberately on the pattern of words such as racism and sexism to frame anti-deaf attitudes as a form of systemic oppression. Related English words sharing the same Latin root include audible, audio, audience, and auditorium.
Related word forms
How audism is actually used
Used primarily in Deaf studies, disability-rights discourse, and academic writing; still unfamiliar to many general readers, so it often benefits from brief glossing on first use. It carries strong negative connotations, like racism or sexism, and is frequently discussed as systemic rather than purely individual.
Easily confused with audism
Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition, whereas audism is discrimination against deaf people — the words differ by only two letters but are entirely unrelated.