Cover next page > title: Seeing Language in Sign : The Work of William C. Stokoe author
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| < previous page page_50 next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_51 next page > Page 51 Stokoe remembers how surprised and pleased he was that his deaf students could pronounce Middle English better than my hearing students had. That seemed a little surprising at first since they couldn't hear, but when you stop to think about it, it's quite logical. They never did assume that what they were looking at could be read off the page like the language they spoke. They realized from long experience that when they saw something on the page they had to learn the code for turning those letter sequences into sounds. With them, as with all my students in Chaucer, I would show them how Middle English was supposed to sound, what the letter combination stood for in the way of vocal production, so my Gallaudet students could read a short passage of Middle English with better pronunciation than my hearing students had. As always, Stokoe was quick to recognize the intelligence and adaptability of his students, and he respected them enough to realize that Chaucer's work would be as accessible to them as to hearing students. But what, one wonders, did he think a class of deaf students would gain from reading Chaucer aloud to each other? Bob Panara remembers that "except for the few students who were postlingually deaf had lost their hearing after acquiring language and highly literate, none of them could fathom what Bill was trying to get across when he taught Chaucer."23 Robbin Battison, one of Bill Stokoe's closest colleagues during the early s, when they worked together in the Linguistics Research Lab, explains what he calls the "characteristics" rather than "shortcomings" of Bill Stokoe as an instructor: I think his wit and humor went above the heads of many people around him at Gallaudet, certainly above the heads of the deaf people around him, because most of his wit was very English-centered and wasn't easily translated into sign language, although he vainly tried to do so. I guess I'd use the word "starchy" to describe how many people perceived him. Download 2.48 Mb. Share with your friends:
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