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Page gesturing' to each other in an apparently very complicated way, or to having addressed a stranger but received only the response 'I am deaf' It is highly unlikely that such a reader would purchase A Dictionary of American Sign Language Based on
Linguistic Principles. Perhaps that is why the essay received less attention than it deserved.
Nonetheless, it is an extraordinary essay. It presents a rich and realistic portrait of deaf people in Americasomething that in had never been done before (deaf people were generally portrayed in terms of deficiencies and differences. Not without irony,
Croneberg describes deaf people as no different from other segments of the American population except in being unable to hear:
[The deaf person is first and foremost an American in national and regional belonging, in education, in his way of earning a living, in his outlook on life, in his family and marriage patterns, in his recreational interests, in his successes and failures. He believes in democracy and detests communism and, like most Americans, is somewhat at a loss if asked to define the meaning of either of these terms. He knows he has to lookout for himself if he is to survive in a fiercely competitive economic system. In religion he is a Protestant, Catholic, or Jew, or sometimes even an atheist. He marries a girl who is reasonably like himself in social class, education, and religion. Sometimes he has to resort to divorce, but there is nothing particularly un-American about this. He plays cards, invites his friends to a barbecue in his backyard in the suburbs, drives to the beach on Saturday, may read a paperback when he has nothing else to do, tinkers with tools and gadgets, talks to his men friends about women and cars, eats hot dogs, hamburgers, fried chicken, and ice cream. He owns a car and is sure he could not live without it. He may own a suburban house and then has the same problems with it as his hearing neighbor a leaking roof, peeling paint, termites, mortgage payments, taxes. Like other Americans, he is determined that the lot of his children must be better than his. He is fully American. There are no other

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