Language Attitudes in the American Deaf Community:

Acknowledgments

xiii Acknowledgments I thank my family for their unconditional love and support: my mother Etta Hill, my father George Hill, my sister Alta Marie Miller, my brother Anthony Hill, my siblings’ spouses, and my nieces and nephews. Since my move to DC, I do not see my family as often as I had when I was an undergraduate. I am the only one in the family who has gone beyond the baccalaureate level, and it was not an easy thing to go through it alone. Even though my family did not understand what was involved, they did understand the sacrifice I made for the doctoral program, and they are proud of what I have accomplished. I thank my mother for often reminding me of the personal phrase that I always used when growing up: “I’ll do my best.” Even when I feel that the work I have done may not be perfect, I know I have done my best. For making this book possible, I owe gratitude to Mrs. Christina Montecalvo , a high school teacher for deaf and hard of hearing students. When I was in high school, there were few resources available to help me improve my English writing skills. Thanks to Mrs. Montecalvo’s inter­ vention and her creativity and dedication to English tutoring, my writing improved dramatically. I appreciate Gallaudet University’s linguistics department faculty for their roles in my development as an academic and researcher. Deborah Chen Pichler was my original faculty advisor. With her guidance, I understood what it meant to be a linguist and a researcher, and with her direction and encouragement, I secured a National Science Foundation fellowship and participated as a research assistant in several research projects. I thank my dissertation committee for advice and guidance in this research, which started as a dissertation topic: Ceil Lucas, Dragana Barac-Cikoja, Gaurav Mathur, Kristin Mulrooney, and Susan Mather. I especially thank Ceil Lucas, my advisor and chair, for seeing me through the doctoral program and continuing to mentor me in my postdoctorate career. Kirsi Grigg-Langdon and Aaron Halleck, my research assistants, were invaluable. Kirsi helped me collect data and conduct interviews; without her, I would not have finished the research on time. Aaron helped me transcribe the video interviews, which were conducted in ASL. Each inter­ view was 30 minutes to 1 hour. With Aaron’s help, I was able to meet all the deadlines. Hill_FM_Pgs i-xiv.indd 13 11/14/2012 9:47:42 AM xiv : Acknowledgments Fain Barker, my graduate assistant at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, did a wonderful job with the sign models, Detoine­ Williams, Bradley Hardin, Frank Griffin, and Alicia Griffin, and provided photo examples of ASL signs and classifiers in the volume. I thank the Fulbright Program for a scholarship to conduct language attitude research on Italian Sign Language in the deaf education ­ system. I also thank Miriam Grottanelli De Santi, the director of the Siena School for Liberal Arts, for hosting me at the school during my stay, and Dr. ­ Elena Radutzky, the former director of the Mason Perkins Deafness Fund, for her assistance with my research. The experience was amazing and gave me a wealth of information on language learning, language and cultural diversity, and social identities, which made me think more about language attitudes as a foreigner in another country and what they mean for deaf communities around the world. I thank my friends who support me whenever the going gets tough: Frank and Melissa Adams, Alesia (Howard) Allen, Scottie Allen, Michele Bishop, David Bruce, Krystin Farrell, Randall Hogue, Roxanne ­ (Dummett) King, Larrysa Martin, Laura Mauldin, Miako (Villanueva) Rankin,­ Martina Moore-Reid, Filippo Secchi, Angela Sohn, Anika Stephen, Stephanie Tevenal, Elicia Varnado, David Warn, Kathleen and Yuri Wijting, Dominik Wolf, Argiroula Zangana, and countless others. Although they may not realize it, their friendship, confidence in me, and acceptance of who I was, who I am, and who I will be are critical. Hill_FM_Pgs i-xiv.indd 14 11/14/2012 9:47:42 AM ...