[1] While the precise meaning of the word remains deliberately vague—Ladd himself calls Deafhood a "process" rather than something finite and clear—it attempts to convey an affirmative and positive acceptance of being deaf.
H-Dirksen L. Bauman quotes Ladd's definition of Deafhood in the introduction of the work Open Your Eyes: "Deafhood is not seen as a finite state but as a process by which deaf individuals come to actualize their deaf identity, positing that those individuals construct that identity around several differently ordered sets of priorities and principles, which are affected by various factors such as nation, era, and class.
"[2] According to Ladd, Deafhood requires deaf people to evaluate and liberate themselves from the oppression they have faced historically from the majority hearing society.
Two major schools of thought emerged concerning which method of education would benefit deaf children: with a visual sign language or with solely speaking and lipreading, manualism vs. oralism.
When William Stokoe and other linguists showed that American Sign Language was a true language with its own grammatical structure, deaf people in America became more motivated to seek recognition from mainstream society on the legitimacy of American deaf culture and their status as a linguistic minority.