Seeing Language in Sign: The Work of William C. Stokoe

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER 8 Ifthere is a place where unconscious signifYing and communicating come together with the conscious use oflanguage, it is in the realm of signs made with human bodies and read with human vision. WILLIAM STOKOE [ 16z] SEE 1 N G LAN G U AGE 1 N S I G N The Linguistics Research Laboratory closed, but Stokoe's letter -writing campaign had a lasting effect. Today, more than ten years later, the administration at Gallaudet is still criticized for its actions. I. King Jordan says the school's reputation has not recovered. Bill should have brought great prestige to Gallaudet, but the administration, in its "wisdom," closed down the Linguistics Research Lab. Now that I'm president I'm not sure how to go about explaining why that happened. It has caused me a lot of headaches, because the message that the world received ... was that we were devaluing American Sign Language. The response of the administration was, "No, no, there's a Department ofLinguistics and there are other units on campus that do the same research." But I don't care how many times or how forcefully you say something like that, people say "That's nonsense." It still hurts us today. People still ask, "Why did Gallaudet ever close down the Linguistics Research Lab?" People all over the world who know about the study ofAmerican Sign Language know Bill Stokoe's name.l When Stokoe retired at the end of 1984, he was sixty-five and Ruth Stokoe was sixty-four. They were comfortable enough on Bill's pension and Social Security to continue to travel occasionally . They "settled down in retirement," Stokoe says, in the same house they had bought in 1957, but much improved by Stokoe's tinkering, "with Ruth continuing to conduct her National Gallery tours, and I editing the journal and seeing the children and grandchildren and friends, and going out to things occasionally - a very quiet but satisfying life together."2 Ruth had never liked riding on her husband's motorcycle, but their granddaughter, Jennifer, was a regular passenger whenever she visited. And the mild success of Linstok Press allowed Bill to indulge his passion for computers, installing all the latest software and keeping abreast of technological developments that would make the journal more readable and easier to manage. It never occurred to Stokoe to abandon his work after retirement . He continues to lecture and to write and review books. C HAP T ERE 1 G H T [163] Sign Language Studies has improved with age: A5 more people have become aware of its existence and submitted articles, Stokoe has been able to publish more selectively. But he has never lost sightofthe journal's purpose. Sign Language Studies is one of the few scholarly journals dealing with a range oftopics of concern to deaf people. It addresses not only linguistic but educational, sociological, and anthropological issues. Tom Humphries, coauthor ofDeafinAmerica and afrequent contributor to Sign Language Studies, says it is one ofthe few journals I read from cover to cover these days. I don't think there is any greater collection of articles related to sign language and deaf culture in any journal anywhere. I like the fact that it doesn't have to be a journal of linguistic inquiry all the time and accepts articles on social structure and education issues. Its main contribution, I think, is that it is a place to print good articles that might not get published anywhere else for a variety ofreasons. It also offers a context of serious works in which to publish such articles.3 I. King Jordan "can't imagine not reading" Sign Language Studies: It is such an important publication. It's the only journal there is that focuses exclusively on the study of sign language and the people who use it. I think that maybe one of the most important things about it is that there is a lot ofwriting in it about deaf culture and deafcommunity. It shows, with each issue, that Bill's definition ofAmerican Sign Language is the same kind ofdefinition thatone would have ofanylanguage.4 Harlan Lane, who received aJohn D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1991 for his work on deaf culture and language, offers high praise for Sign Language Studies : "What a remarkable achievement it is. In connection with writing a book I have just finished, I recently had occasion to...