Cover next page > title: Seeing Language in Sign : The Work of William C. Stokoe author
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| < previous page page_2 next page > Page When the students of Gallaudet University shutdown their campus in March of 1988, they were not simply protesting the appointment of a hearing president who knew only a few signs of American Sign Language and who was ignorant of the culture it expressed. They were protesting more than one hundred years of ignorance, oppression, and injustice. But in those one hundred years, not all hearing people had been the enemy there had always been those who were able to see beyond the stereotypes, beyond the self-fulfilling prophecies. And while it must be stated emphatically that the Deaf President Now Revolution was conceived and conducted by deaf students and adults who were no longer willing to be treated as an oppressed minority, recognition must be given to those who helped them and other deaf Americans to realize that their signs, which had been 'actively banished by the hearing establishment concerned with the deaf for over a century" constituted a unique and fully developed language. One of the first people to see signing as a legitimate language was a Gallaudet English professor, Dr. William C. Stokoe, Jr., hired into teachof all thingsChaucer. Although some of the students who participated in the Deaf President Now Revolution may never even have heard of Bill Stokoe (pronounced "stow-key"), those who do know of his work recognize its connection to the successful efforts now underway by deaf people for total control of their education, of their language, of their lives. In the words of Lou Fant, the well-known actor, writer, and interpreter, Bill made the first crack in the dam that eventually erupted into the flood that we call deaf empowerment. Without a legitimately recognized language, there is no culture without a culture, there is no self-identity; without self-identity, you just goon trying to be what others demand you be. Without the concept of deaf culture and the identity that goes with it, there would have been no Deaf President Now [DPN]. The chain of events that led to the DPN protest had its first link forged by none other than Bill. Not only can you safely connect Bill's work to the DPN protest . . . you can't leave it out; it's sort of the culmination, the crowning achievement of his work. It's what his work was all about. Bill Download 2.48 Mb. Share with your friends:
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