A European Emphasis

Editorial A EUROPEAN EMPHASIS Just after No. 57 was sent to press, we received the first newsletter of the new (1986) International Sign Linguistics Association (See their brochure and application for membership reproduced herein). Of especial interest to the editors and readers of SigjnLanguage Studies is the prospect of a new International Journal of Sign. Here I drop the editorial we for first-person singular. Not long after the IV. International Symposium on Sign Language Research (Finland) concluded, William Edmondson, who will edit the prospective journal, called to ascertain my reaction to the advent of a new journal in the field solely occupied by Sign Language Studies since 1972. My response was and is that the more publication (and understanding) of reliable information on sign languages the better for us all; further, that competition may help to stimulate and sharpen research and writing in this field. Moving from the general to the particular, I gave him some indication of the problems of launching a scientific journal--the first issue of Sign LanguageStudies appeared about eighteen months after Professor Thomas Sebeok proposed that if I would undertake the editorship he would to publish (semiannually) at the University of Indiana an international journal of sign language research. By the time of the first issue's appearance, by arrangement with Sebeok's center, the Dutch firm of Mouton was the publisher. An early review was critical of the exclusively American and almost entirely Gallaudet College provenance of articles in the first two issues. The question seemed to be: Can a journal originating in the Linguistics Research Laboratory at Gallaudet College be called international?" The answer ever since has been, "yes indeed" In SLS 3, Rolf Kuschel of Denmark described the sign language used on Rennell Island in the Pacific, and there followed papers on the signing encountered by early explorers of the new world (Hewes in SLS 4), Japanese SL kinship signs (Peng in SLS 5), the manual ploys used with deaf pupils by Ponce de Leon in 15th century Spain (Chaves &Soler also SLS '58 Spring 1988 in SLS 5), a world-ranging bibliography of human communicational behavior (Ciolek in SLS 6), and a description of the structure of SL in Southern France (Sallagoity in SLS 7). The eighth issue contained, in addition to articles on ASL, an article on signs used by a 16th century Spanish teacher, two articles on Danish sign language, and one on the sign language used in a Cistercian monastery (see also pp. 00-00, this issue). SLS 9 carried a long descriptive essay and a dictionary of signs used by sawmill workers in British Columbia, and SLS 10 (now alas out of print, but see SLS 56:275-287) published two articles by Jordan and Battison, for which they obtained data by interviewing signers of 18 different sign languages. Distance is no great barrier to the exchange of ideas committed to writing, and an international journal can be based anywhere that international postal treaties hold sway. But distance and the cost of travel still severely limit the important preliminary exchange of ideas (and facts) in face-to-face encounters. Both the National Symposia on Sign Language Research and Teaching and the International Symposia on Sign Language Research have been successful, growing in participation almost geometrically, at least in their first three or four sessions. There is no doubt that living for several days in constant conversation with kindred spirits and discussing the topics uppermost on each other's research agenda generate enthusiasm and assure deeper penetration and wider dissemination of research efforts. However, between the energy-charged feelings such symposia generate and the publication for permanent record of information that will enlarge the body of knowledge of a particular science or branch of science, there is the universal gap between the thought and the deed. Whatever comes of the new venture, Sg LeaguageStudes is and will continue to be an international journal of sign language research. It still welcomes manuscripts from any part of the globe, and it publishes those that meet the standards established and evolved by its fifteen-year run and applied by its distinguished reviewers. Quality of research and reporting, not the country of...