Deaf Rhetoric: An Ecology of Health Communication

The book addresses an understudied aspect of access and is written by an international deaf researcher from Japan who uses American Sign Language(ASL) and English as non-native languages. In order to identify appropriate interpreting services for specific treatments, the author focuses on healthcare professionals' and D/HH patients' interpreting preferences for critical and non-critical care in the US, and offers a new theoretical framework, an Ecology of Health Communication, to contextualize and analyze these preferences. The ecological matrix and its five analytical dimensions (i.e., physical-material, psychological, social, spatial, and temporal) allow readers to understand how these dimensions influence healthcare professionals' and D/HH patients' interpreting preferences as well as the treatment outcomes. This book concludes by prioritizing the use of an appropriate interpreter for specific treatments and allocating funds for in-person interpreters for critical care treatments.

​Manako Yabe, PhD, MSW is the first Deaf faculty member in the Division of Disability Sciences at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. Dr. Yabe was born deaf in Japan and grew up in three countries: Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Deaf Studies from California State University, Northridge, a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Southern California, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Disability Studies from the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her areas of specialization include: Technical Communication, Deaf Studies, Disability Studies, Disability Rhetoric, Writing Center Studies, and Mixed Methods Research.