A person who is completely deaf has no choice but to accept the fact that they cannot hear. That is liberating, in that it frees you to accept that you will be using sign language to communicate, and just generally living in a different manner as a result. Folks who are "Hard of Hearing", in my experience, go the other direction, refusing to accept that they may need to accept a different lifestyle. They are more likely to be offended if you refer to them as "deaf", and a lot of them will patently refuse to learn ASL, as they can still "hear", just not as well. They seem to be, in my experience, quite a bit more bitter about their situation, as well.