Positioning, moral orientation and calibration in a virtual deaf-hearing sign language space

This article examines deaf and hearing students’ reflections on and expectations of deaf spaces during an 8-week virtual course connecting two universities in different countries. Reviewing student surveys, their ‘deaf space maps’, self-reflections, and video footage of student discussions, we show how students understand the concept of ‘deaf space’ as well as how they position themselves in relation to these spaces, both in terms of past experiences as well as current physical and virtual spaces. Building on the concept of ‘moral orientation’ (Green, 2014; Green, 2022), which we understand as the ethical commitment participants bring to the work of mutual understanding in multilingual encounters, we analyse how deaf and hearing students infused their interaction in these spaces with judgements about their own position with regards to degrees of belonging in physical and virtual deaf spaces. The virtual space of the course, created and coincidentally conducted during the global Covid-19 pandemic, reveals the persistence of moral orientations in virtual spaces as well as the importance of such spaces. In the discussion, we ask if positioning is a fundamental aspect of the moral orientation that Green (2022) and Moriarty and Kusters (2021) claim is a prerequisite for mutual understanding in multilingual spaces.