William C. Stokoe was an American linguist and a professor at Gallaudet University. He was born July 21, 1919 in Hampshire and died on April 4, 2000 in Chevy Chase, Maryland at an age of 80 years. He was a leading educator of the deaf and was instrumental in gaining acceptance of ASL as a genuine language. Stokoe graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY in 1941, from where in 1946 he earned his Ph.D. in English, specifically medieval literature. From there, he became an instructor of English at Wells College in Aurora.
From 1955 to 1970, he served as a professor and chairperson of the English department at Gallaudet College, a school for hearing-impaired students in Washington, D.C, after being recruited to the position by way of his friend and former classmate Dean George Detmold. He published sign Language shape (1960) and co-authored in conjunction with Dorothy C. Casterline and Carl G. Croneberg, A Dictionary of yank signal Language on Linguistic standards (1965). The previous became the first location the time “American sign language” become ever officially used. (The completely capitalized version: “American sign Language,” first appeared within the Buff and Blue in October 1963. He additionally started out the instructional magazine signal Language research in 1972, which he edited until 1996. He set up Linstok Press, an educational publishing corporation, to facilitate the magazine’s e-book. Stokoe’s final book, Language in Hand, was published in 2001, after his loss of life. The books helped prove that sign language met the definition of a language. If no dissenter was convinced, Dr. Stokoe’s beliefs gradually drew wide acceptance and persuaded schools for the deaf to re-evaluate their approaches. It is now common for schools to use both oral and signing methods of instruction.
In the beginning, he did now not get hold of a lot helps that he acquired some harsh complaint as well as ridicule from his colleagues. previous to the Nineteen Sixties and 1970s, oralism were the manner of deaf education and signal language turned into seemed down on or even turned into prohibited in educational settings. Before his time, ASL was once seemed as a set of gestures or a “simplified” or “broken English”. It changed into no longer considered a language of its personal.
However, his works disproved them scientifically and revolutionized the notion of language whilst he supplied his groundbreaking paper signal Language structure in 1960 and co-authored Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic principles in 1965. He based the magazine sign Language research in 1972. For the reason that 1970s, studies and studies have been broadly elevated. He retired from Gallaudet University in 1984.
Stokoe researched American Sign Language (ASL) extensively while he labored at Gallaudet College. He coined the time period chorology, the equal of phonology for signal language. However, signal language linguists, of which he turned into the first, now usually use the term “phonology” for signed languages. Stokoe invented a written notation for sign language (now called Stokoe notation) as ASL had no written form at the time. Unlike Signwriting, which was developed later, it is not pictographic, but drew heavily on the Latin alphabet. through the guide of his work, he was instrumental in changing the perception of ASL from that of a broken or simplified model of English to that of a complicated and thriving herbal language in its own right with an unbiased syntax and grammar as practical and powerful as any located within the oral languages of the sector. Because he raised the status of ASL in educational and academic circles, he is considered a hero in the Deaf community.
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