Cover next page > title: Seeing Language in Sign : The Work of William C. Stokoe author

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Page people on earth whose ways are so much like his own as are those of his hearing fellow Americans.
Croneberg proceeds to describe the ways in which deaf people are different, showing that the differences lie in behavioral patterns that constitute the cultural underpinnings of a minority group, primarily "the language of signs" 40
Croneberg's second essay in the dictionary, "Sign Language Dialects" is the result of fieldwork he conducted in deaf communities in Virginia and Maryland:
I had an asset as a sign language dialect researcher, a very special asset. I was deaf myself and thus a fellow "tribesman"
to any informant I interviewed. I was also a Gallaudet graduate and a Gallaudet teacher, which meant that anywhere in the country I went to do the dialect work, I would be recognized not only as a fellow tribesman but as one enjoying special standing and respect in the tribe. In Virginia, due to my affiliation with my future wife, Eleanor, I had an even stronger affiliation with the tribe than elsewhere, which made it much easier for me to count on good relationships with both contacts and informants. Avery large number of deaf people in the state knew and respected and liked Eleanor Wetzel; to be known as her husband-to-be was an obvious "in" no matter where I went in the state.41
With the publication of the dictionary in 1965, respect for Stokoe's work continued to grow in the linguistic community. In addition to invitations to deliver scores of lectures, he was invited to address the Seventeenth Annual Georgetown University
Roundtable in Language and Linguistics in March of 1966 and the Columbia University Linguistics Circle in November of the same year. In 1967 he spoke at the Cued Speech Institute in 1969 the Center for Applied Linguistics sponsored a two-day conference on sign language at which he was one of the featured speakers. In 1970 he published his first essay on sign language diglossia, which brought him even more recognition, and in 1971 he spoke at a seminar on deafness at New York University.
With each presentation or article he further articu-

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