Sound Citizenship: Hearing and Speech Disabilities in World War I

Abstract This article discusses speech and hearing disabled Americans’ claims to citizenship during World War I, and the ways American policymakers sought to rehabilitate American soldiers treated in the U.S. Army Section of Defects of Hearing and Speech—or those classified after the Section’s closure as deaf, hard-of-hearing, or “speech defective.” Ultimately, I argue that one’s aural communication abilities were indicators of worthiness in American society and that this was especially the case during World War I, when tensions about speech and hearing heightened within and outside of the Deaf community due to significant pressures placed on Americans to show support for the war. Such pressures also shaped the experiences of American soldiers treated for speech and hearing disabilities after 1918, by suggesting that their service to the United States could not be complete until they were successfully rehabilitated through lip-reading training. To be able to aurally communicate signified the veterans’ sound citizenship in a literal and a metaphorical sense.