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Page But the committee also noted that the new faculty, in order to be successful at a college such as Gallaudet, "must have some interest in and understanding of the problems of the hard of hearing. There is also the problem of communicating with signs,
which does not seem to be as serious or as difficult to overcome as does the greater one of understanding the sociological and psychological problems of the hard of hearing" 35
Stokoe's research plans made it possible for Detmold to report to the committee that one of his new faculty members was beginning a "structural linguistic analysis of the language of signs to see if sign language can be studied as other languages are with a descriptive grammar and lexicon."36
The summer Bill Stokoe spent in Buffalo working with Trager and Smith, two of the best known linguists in the country at that time, eventually led to his first written work, a monograph, about a topic that would consume him for the rest of his life Sign
Language Structure An Outline of the Visual Communication Systems of the American Deaf.37
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Page Chapter 4
Because it demands large-scale paradigm destruction . . . the emergence of new theories is generally preceded by a period of
pronounced professional insecurity.
THOMAS KUHN The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
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