Perceptual colonization and educational experience in deaf communities: A decolonial perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31391/OQRN9827Keywords:
perceptual colonization, deaf communities, disaffordances, epistemic injustice, educational inclusionAbstract
This article examines perceptual colonization as an educational mechanism that renders the communicative possibilities of sign languages invisible. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with deaf university students and hearing educational stakeholders in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico, and the Attitudes Toward Deaf Culture Scale (25 items; n = 54), the study examines four dimensions: linguistic-cultural inferiorization, normalization of exclusionary practices, assimilationism, and bias toward oral communication models. Grounded in ecological psychology and decolonial epistemology, the concept of disaffordance is used to interpret socially shaped constraints on the perception of action possibilities. The findings show a negative correlation between familiarity with the deaf community and overall scale scores (ρ = −.48, p < .001). This exploratory result does not establish causality or demonstrate that interaction reverses these constraints. The findings raise questions about the recognition of sign languages in educational settings and suggest avenues for future research into potential processes of perceptual transformation. Implications for teacher education and inclusion policies are discussed.
Downloads
References
Ayala, S. (2016). Speech affordances: A structural take on how much we can do with our words. European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 24, núm. 4, pp. 879–891. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12186
Bampi, L., Guilhem, D. y Alves, E. (2010). Social model: A new approach of the disability theme. Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem, vol. 18, núm. 4, pp. 816–823. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-11692010000400022
Bauman, H-D. (2004). Audism: Exploring the metaphysics of oppression. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, vol. 9, núm. 2, pp. 239–246. https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enh025
Bauman, H-D. y Murray, J. (eds.) (2014). Deaf Gain: Raising the stakes for human diversity. University of Minnesota Press.
Branson, J. y Miller, D. (1993). Sign language, the deaf and the epistemic violence of mainstreaming. Language and Education, vol. 7, núm. 1, pp. 21–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500789309541346
Bruineberg, J. y Rietveld, E. (2014). Self-organization, free energy minimization, and optimal grip on a field of affordances. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 8, 599. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00599
Capirci, O., Bonsignori, C. y Di Renzo, A. (2022). Signed languages: A triangular semiotic dimension. Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12, 802911. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.802911
Chemero, A. (2003). An outline of a theory of affordances. Ecological Psychology, vol. 15, núm. 2, pp. 181–195. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326969ECO1502_5
Chieppa, M.-A., Sandoval-Mena, M. y Artiles, A. (2026). Etiquetar la diversidad: la patologización de la diferencia en el alumnado con diversidad cultural y lingüística. Revista Española de Pedagogía, vol. 84, núm. 294, pp. 371-386. https://doi.org/10.9781/rep.2026.699
Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design justice: Community-led practices to build the worlds we need. MIT Press.
David, E. J. R. (ed.) (2014). Internalized oppression: The psychology of marginalized groups. Springer Publishing Company.
David, E. J. R. y Okazaki, S. (2006). The Colonial Mentality Scale (CMS) for Filipino Americans: Scale construction and psychological implications. Journal of Counseling Psychology, vol. 53, núm. 2, pp. 241–252. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.53.2.241
Dokumacı, A. (2023). Activist affordances: How disabled people improvise more habitable worlds. Duke University Press.
Emmorey, K. (2002). Language, cognition, and the brain: Insights from sign language research. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Escobar, L. y Barajas, G. (2024). La referencia lingüística y la decolonización de los nombres propios en las lenguas de señas. Lengua y Sociedad, vol. 23, núm. 1, pp. 579–607. https://doi.org/10.15381/lengsoc.v23i1.27501
Escobar, L. y Peinado Beltrán, C. (2026). You are in my realm: A formal account of epistemic appropriation. Preprints.org. https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202601.1087
Figari, C. A. y Fernández Unsain, R. A. (2023). Re-presentaciones sociales de la discapacidad: entre modelos y personas. Debates y perspectivas en la dinámica de las interacciones sociales. Revista Española de Discapacidad, vol. 11, núm. 2, pp. 7–28. https://doi.org/10.5569/2340-5104.11.02.01
Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press.
Gahrn-Andersen, R. (2025). Enlanguaged affordances in social practices: A critical rethinking of Gibson's approach to language. Language & Communication, vol. 104, pp. 121-130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2025.07.004
Gallagher, S. y Ransom, T. (2016). Artifacting minds: Material engagement theory and joint action. En G. Etzelmüller y C. Tewes (eds.). Embodiment in evolution and culture (pp. 337–351). Mohr Siebeck.
Gibson, J. (1979/2015). The ecological approach to visual perception (ed. clásica). Psychology Press.
Grosfoguel, R. (2013). The structure of knowledge in westernized universities: Epistemic racism/sexism and the four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, vol. 11, núm. 1, pp. 73–90. https://scholarworks.umb.edu/humanarchitecture/vol11/iss1/8/
Hughes, B. y Paterson, K. (1997). The social model of disability and the disappearing body: Towards a sociology of impairment. Disability & Society, vol. 12, núm. 3, pp. 325–340. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599727209
Kita, S. y Özyürek, A. (2003). What does cross-linguistic variation in semantic coordination of speech and gesture reveal? Evidence for an interface representation of spatial thinking and speaking. Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 48, núm. 1, pp. 16–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-596X(02)00505-3
Liddell, S. K. (2003). Grammar, gesture, and meaning in American sign language. Cambridge University Press.
Lobo, L., Heras-Escribano, M. y Travieso, D. (2018). The history and philosophy of ecological psychology. Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 9, p. 2228. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02228
Lockton, D. (2006). Architectures of control in product design. Engineering Designer, marzo-abril de 2006. https://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2006/03/15/architectures-of-control-in-engineering-designer-magazine/
McClelland, T. y Sliwa, P. (2023). Gendered affordance perception and unequal domestic labour. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 107, núm. 2, pp. 501–524. https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12929
Monzalvo Curiel, A., Ayala, P., Magdaleno Moreno, M. y Sánchez Vázquez, L. (2025). Inclusión educativa de estudiantes universitarios con discapacidad auditiva. Sinéctica, Revista Electrónica de Educación, núm. 64, e1669. https://doi.org/10.31391/ATFH6802
Moreno, C. A. (2019). Educación para la comunidad silente: experiencias del programa “ADIUAS” de atención a la diversidad. Tesis de licenciatura en Antropología Social, Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa.
Oliver, M. (2009). Understanding disability: From theory to practice (2.ª ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Peinado Beltrán, C. (2026). La construcción discursiva de la identidad sorda en la Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa. Tesis doctoral, Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa.
Peinado Beltrán, C. (2025). Disaffordances identitarias y opresión internalizada: decolonización de la discapacidad en comunidades sordas, PsyArXiv Preprints. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ytgfr_v2
Perniss, P. y Vigliocco, G. (2014). The bridge of iconicity: From a world of experience to the experience of language. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 369, núm. 1651, 20130300. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2013.0300
Pezzano, G. (2024). The medium is the (discriminatory) message: The medial epistemic injustices of philosophy. Philosophies, vol. 9, núm. 6, 169. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9060169
Ramstead, M. J. D., Veissière, S. P. L. y Kirmayer, L. J. (2016). Cultural affordances: Scaffolding local worlds through shared intentionality and regimes of attention. Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 7, 1090. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01090
Santos, B. de S. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Paradigm Publishers.
Schlenker, P. (2018). Visible meaning: Sign language and the foundations of semantics. Theoretical Linguistics, vol. 44, núm. 3-4, pp. 123–208. https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2018-0012
Segundo-Ortin, M. y Heras-Escribano, M. (2024). The risk of trivializing affordances: Mental and cognitive affordances examined. Philosophical Psychology, vol. 37, núm. 7, pp. 1639-1655. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2023.2228341
Shakespeare, T. y Watson, N. (2001). The social model of disability: An outdated ideology? Research in Social Science and Disability, vol. 2, pp. 9–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-3547(01)80018-X
Sliwa, P. y McClelland, T. (2026). Seeing others as objects: Perceptual objectification & affordances. European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 34, núm. 1, pp. 297–312. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.70027
Slonimska, A., Özyürek, A. y Capirci, O. (2020). The role of iconicity and simultaneity for efficient communication: The case of Italian Sign Language (LIS). Cognition, vol. 200, 104246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104246
Taub, S. F. (2001). Language from the body: Iconicity and metaphor in American sign language. Cambridge University Press.
Tomaszewski, P., Krzysztofiak, P., Kowalska, J. y Hauser, P. C. (2025). Internalized oppression and deaf people’s mental health. Scientific Reports, vol. 15, 5268. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-89789-1
Toro, J., Rietveld, E. y Kiverstein, J. (2025). Disabling scaffolds: The lived embodiment of disability in an oppressive sociomaterial environment. Topoi, vol. 44, pp. 529–543. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-024-10132-w
Toro, J., Kiverstein, J. y Rietveld, E. (2020). The ecological-enactive model of disability: Why disability does not entail pathological embodiment. Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 11, p. 1162. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01162
Tregaskis, C. (2002). Social model theory: The story so far... Disability & Society, vol. 17, núm. 4, pp. 457–470. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687590220140377
Velarde-Camaqui, D., Loyola-Velarde, A., Velarde-Cárdenas, L. E. y Velarde-Camaqui, K. (2026). Racismo epistémico y exclusión curricular en la educación económica rural: evidencias desde sistemas educativos formales. Sinéctica, Revista Electrónica de Educación, núm. 66, e1766. https://doi.org/10.31391/MJMF2463
Wittkower, D. E. (2016). Principles of anti-discriminatory design. En 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Ethics in Engineering, Science and Technology (ETHICS) (pp. 1–7). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ETHICS.2016.7560055
Wittkower, D. E. (2017). Disaffordances and dysaffordances in code. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/10174
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Sinéctica
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.
Authors who publish in Sinéctica agree to the following terms:
The authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication of the authorized work simultaneously under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows others to share the work as long as both the authorship of the work and the initial publication in this journal are acknowledged.
Authors may enter into additional separate contractual agreements for non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the journal (e.g., publishing in an institutional repository or a book), with acknowledgement of initial publication in this journal.
Authors are allowed to publish their work in institutional repositories or on their own website before and during the submission process, as it may generate productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of the published work.
Explanatory note: As of 2017 Sinéctica is governed by the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 International License, a version that standardizes licenses internationally.
Articles published between 1992 and 2016 are covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license, which allows a work to be shared and distributed non-commercially and with acknowledgement of the author, but prohibits modification of the original creation.
