Exploring DHH university students’ narratives on Esharani, the national sign language of the Iranian Deaf community: What's the story?

Sign language has been playing a vital role in the lives of Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals. Although sign language is widely recognised as the most optimal language for learning and communication among DHH individuals, its adoption and use have been fraught with numerous complexities and challenges across different societies and countries. Given the paucity of research delving into the perceptions of DHH individuals, this study, using a narrative inquiry approach, sheds light on these perceptions by giving voice to these mostly underrepresented groups of students in Iran. To achieve this, ten DHH students from different academic disciplines participated in semi-structured interviews to elicit their narratives about Esharani, the national sign language of the Iranian Deaf community. Bottom-up thematic analysis of transcribed interviews brought to light six themes regarding the perceptions of these students towards Esharani: (1) the impact of the educational environment, (2) the impact of social interaction on SL competence, (3) the role of multimedia resources, (4) the role of family dynamics, (5) the essence of learning both Persian and Esharani and (6) Esharani as the medium of instruction. These overarching themes illuminated a wide range of educational, social, media, familial, and linguistic factors that impacted the language learning trajectories of this cohort of DHH individuals. The implications of the results for education and families of DHH individuals are discussed as well.