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Buff and Blue ''Dr. Stokoe's work will continue at Gallaudet, only indifferent ways" . . . "Other departments and people are doing sign language research" . . . "We can close that small group of researchers without hurting sign language" . . . "We had to change something" . . . "The members of the Linguistics Department are all respected, competent researchers and all are supportive of ASL" The administrators really did protest too much, and the students at Gallaudet knew it. The Buff and Blue article critical of the decision to close the "world-famous" LRL, observed that
The departments cited by Trybus as doing sign language research include the Department of Linguistics, the Center for
Education and Human Development, the Department of Interpreter/Transliterator Instruction, the Department of Sign
Communication, the Office of Assessment and Demographic Studies. In addition, Dr. James Woodward, a noted sociolinguist, is working part-time for GRI [Gallaudet Research Institute. However, apart from the Department of
Linguistics, which is doing a project on "Predictive Factors in Reading" and the Center for Education and Human
Development, which is doing a joint study with the Department of Linguistics on "Sign Variations in Context" and Dr.
Woodward's part-time research, there is no evidence that the other departments mentioned by Dr. Trybus are, in fact,
doing ASL linguistics research.
It is important to note that since 1971, Stokoe's work was done on a full-time basis by trained linguists or those in training to become linguists in the LRL. With the exception of the three linguists in the Linguistics Department, who are expected to teach 80 percent of their time with 20 percent going to research, and Dr. Woodward, who lives and works in California,
none of the people expected by Dr. Trybus to carry on Dr. Stokoe's work are trained linguists.
Additionally, the two world-renowned ASL linguists now working full-time for the LRL, Dennis Cokely and Dr.
Charlotte Baker-Shenk, coauthors of the widely used series of texts titled American Sign Language, will no longer be em-

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