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

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Page To tell the plain truth, most of us at Gallaudet at the time couldn't make heads or tails out of Stokoe's first book, Sign
Language Structure. To most of us, it was a big joke and a waste of time and money. That was because none of us knew anything about the "linguistics of sign language it was a lingua nova to us. . . . We felt, why fool around with a language that you can't even handle And why fix something that ain't broke?
Don't forget, too, that much of this attitude was related to a common dislike for the dean (Detmold), especially by the deaf staff, who had never forgiven him for what happened to Teddy Hughes. I would say this was the feeling for quite a few years. In addition to resenting Stokoe's friendship with Detmold, people on campus, deaf and hearing alike, were simply amazed by
Stokoe's nerve. Lou Fant describes the faculty's response to Sign Language Structure:
Nobody, I mean not one soul . . . thought it was worth a tinker's dam, except, of course, George Detmold. The general attitude was this Who did this whippersnapper, who had never meta deaf person before coming to Gallaudet, think he was What could he tell those of us who had been around deaf people all our lives [Fant's parents are deaf about "manual communication How dare he come outwith such outlandish statements without first running them by the Old Guard to get their approval Bill's sin was that he was an outsider, not one of the old boys' clubthus he couldn't possibly know very much. He was just out to make a name for himself with all this linguistic gibberish. ASL a language Ridiculous.
It might help explain the negative reaction to Bill and his work if I can convey a sense of the period with regard to the education of deaf children. Oralism was the dominant philosophy of education. "Dominant" is perhaps too weak a word. It was the golden calf which, if we didn't all accept wholeheartedly and worship, at least we never publicly said might be a false idol. Those of us who were not oralists were timid about attacking it.

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