Research for a Reason

IF 0.5 Q3 LINGUISTICS
Charlotte Baker-Shenk
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That led me to help set up a fieldwork class at Berkeley with a Deaf instructor—and eventually to request a meeting with William C. Stokoe and ask for the opportunity to work with him at the LRL. At our first meeting, Dr. Stokoe (Bill) generously spent an entire day with me responding to my many questions and sharing LRL resources. However, because I couldn't muster the courage to ask about working at the LRL, I instead asked to return the next day, and Bill agreed. When I finally asked him the following day, Bill responded with his typical welcome and hearty support. My work there began in the summer of 1975. <strong>[End Page 203]</strong></p> <p>Bill and I ended up receiving a multiyear grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the linguistic functions of non-manual behaviors in American Sign Language (ASL), which became my area of research for many years. I was also fortunate, as a graduate student, to meet Drs. Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen at their Human Interaction Lab at UC San Francisco, and to become part of their pioneering work in training a group of graduate students to reliably use their new Facial Action Coding System (FACS). FACS eventually became the primary tool I used for my dissertation research—meticulously coding all the facial movements, muscle by muscle, of native Deaf signers in conversations.</p> <p>It took hundreds of hours watching videotaped segments over and over again (noting changes in each video \"field,\" sixty fields per second) to numerically code and analyze a total of three conversational minutes! The results were astonishing—facial movements were actually the signaling backbone structure of the syntax of ASL, while also providing information about the affect of the signer and helping to regulate turn-taking. As researchers on other sign languages have since confirmed, these visual-gestural languages are NOT simply \"manual\" languages. They are multichannel languages that effectively utilize various \"articulators\" of the body.</p> <p>However, with that work, I begin to experience a tension between purely academic pursuits for the joy of exploring a fascinating language—and a growing awareness of the deep pain of its users. As my own ASL skills improved (thanks to the patient mentoring of Deaf colleagues like Carol Padden, Ella Mae Lentz, Patrick Graybill, and MJ Bienvenu, who also became friends; see figure 1). I began to feel the urgency of getting the results of linguistic research out into the Deaf community as well as using those results to challenge the assumptions and practices of sign language teaching, sign language interpreting, and deaf education—all of which were characterized by stunning insanities: Hearing people who didn't know the indigenous language but were employed to teach it. Hearing interpreters who signed in ways unintelligible to Deaf people. 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引用次数: 0

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Research for a Reason
  • Charlotte Baker-Shenk (bio)

It took me a long time, many years, before I stopped having dreams about the Linguistics Research Lab (LRL) at Gallaudet—of being part of something so much bigger than myself. Of good-hearted and bright-minded colleagues working tirelessly to discover and document the complex, brilliant structures of a denigrated language—and in doing so, to help alleviate the pain of an oppressed community that had been told it "didn't have a language." The LRL had been a beehive of activity, fielding urgent requests for information and assistance from people all around the world, and a welcoming, resting place for Deaf1 people working on the Gallaudet campus and elsewhere who would regularly show up to share their painful experiences.

But I didn't start with an awareness of this struggle. Before ar riving at the LRL, I was simply a graduate student in linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, in the mid-1970s with a background in psychology and an interest in the nonverbal behavior of hearing people while speaking. On a whim, I took an evening class in sign language with a Deaf instructor and fell in love with the language. That led me to help set up a fieldwork class at Berkeley with a Deaf instructor—and eventually to request a meeting with William C. Stokoe and ask for the opportunity to work with him at the LRL. At our first meeting, Dr. Stokoe (Bill) generously spent an entire day with me responding to my many questions and sharing LRL resources. However, because I couldn't muster the courage to ask about working at the LRL, I instead asked to return the next day, and Bill agreed. When I finally asked him the following day, Bill responded with his typical welcome and hearty support. My work there began in the summer of 1975. [End Page 203]

Bill and I ended up receiving a multiyear grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the linguistic functions of non-manual behaviors in American Sign Language (ASL), which became my area of research for many years. I was also fortunate, as a graduate student, to meet Drs. Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen at their Human Interaction Lab at UC San Francisco, and to become part of their pioneering work in training a group of graduate students to reliably use their new Facial Action Coding System (FACS). FACS eventually became the primary tool I used for my dissertation research—meticulously coding all the facial movements, muscle by muscle, of native Deaf signers in conversations.

It took hundreds of hours watching videotaped segments over and over again (noting changes in each video "field," sixty fields per second) to numerically code and analyze a total of three conversational minutes! The results were astonishing—facial movements were actually the signaling backbone structure of the syntax of ASL, while also providing information about the affect of the signer and helping to regulate turn-taking. As researchers on other sign languages have since confirmed, these visual-gestural languages are NOT simply "manual" languages. They are multichannel languages that effectively utilize various "articulators" of the body.

However, with that work, I begin to experience a tension between purely academic pursuits for the joy of exploring a fascinating language—and a growing awareness of the deep pain of its users. As my own ASL skills improved (thanks to the patient mentoring of Deaf colleagues like Carol Padden, Ella Mae Lentz, Patrick Graybill, and MJ Bienvenu, who also became friends; see figure 1). I began to feel the urgency of getting the results of linguistic research out into the Deaf community as well as using those results to challenge the assumptions and practices of sign language teaching, sign language interpreting, and deaf education—all of which were characterized by stunning insanities: Hearing people who didn't know the indigenous language but were employed to teach it. Hearing interpreters who signed in ways unintelligible to Deaf people. Hearing teachers who couldn't communicate with their students but then blamed the poor academic achievements of their students on their deafness rather than on the teachers' own lack of...

研究是有原因的
以下是内容的简要摘录,以代替摘要: 研究是有原因的 夏洛特-贝克-申克(Charlotte Baker-Shenk)(简历 我花了很长时间,很多年,才停止对加劳德特语言学研究实验室(LRL)的憧憬--憧憬自己是比自己更伟大的事业的一部分。梦想着心地善良、头脑聪明的同事们不知疲倦地工作,去发现和记录一种被诋毁的语言复杂而精妙的结构,从而帮助一个被压迫的群体减轻痛苦,因为他们被告知 "没有语言"。聋人语言实验室一直是一个活动的蜂巢,它可以满足来自世界各地的人们寻求信息和帮助的紧急请求,也是在加劳德特校园和其他地方工作的聋人1们的一个温馨的休息场所,他们经常来这里分享他们的痛苦经历。但我并不是一开始就意识到这场斗争的。在来到 LRL 之前,我不过是 20 世纪 70 年代中期加州大学伯克利分校语言学专业的一名研究生,拥有心理学背景,并对听力人说话时的非语言行为感兴趣。一次偶然的机会,我参加了一个聋人教师的手语夜校,从此爱上了手语。这促使我在伯克利帮助开设了一门由聋人教师授课的田野调查课,并最终要求与威廉-C-斯托克会面,请求获得在 LRL 与他共事的机会。在我们的第一次会面中,Stokoe 博士(比尔)慷慨地花了一整天的时间回答了我的许多问题,并与我分享了 LRL 的资源。但是,由于我没有勇气问及在 LRL 工作的问题,我要求第二天再来,比尔同意了。第二天,当我终于向他提出请求时,比尔以他特有的欢迎和衷心的支持回应了我。1975 年夏天,我开始在那里工作。[第 203 页完] 比尔和我最终获得了美国国家科学基金会(NSF)的多年资助,研究美国手语(ASL)中非手动行为的语言功能,这也成为我多年来的研究领域。作为研究生,我还有幸在加州大学旧金山分校的人际互动实验室结识了保罗-埃克曼(Paul Ekman)博士和华莱士-弗里森(Wallace Friesen)博士,并参与了他们的开创性工作,培训一批研究生可靠地使用他们的新型面部动作编码系统(FACS)。FACS 最终成为我论文研究的主要工具--对母语为聋人的手语者在对话中的所有面部动作逐一进行肌肉编码。我花了数百个小时反复观看录制的视频片段(记录每个视频 "场 "的变化,每秒 60 个场),对总共三分钟的对话进行数字编码和分析!结果令人吃惊--面部动作实际上是 ASL 语法的信号骨干结构,同时还提供了关于手语者情绪的信息,并有助于调节轮流发言。正如其他手语研究人员后来证实的那样,这些视觉-手势语言并不是简单的 "手动 "语言。它们是有效利用身体各种 "发音器 "的多通道语言。然而,随着这项工作的开展,我开始体验到一种紧张关系,一方面是纯粹的学术追求,以探索一种迷人的语言为乐,另一方面是越来越多地意识到使用者的深切痛苦。随着我自身 ASL 技能的提高(感谢聋人同事卡罗尔-帕登(Carol Padden)、艾拉-梅-伦茨(Ella Mae Lentz)、帕特里克-格雷比尔(Patrick Graybill)和 MJ-比恩韦努(MJ Bienvenu)等人的耐心指导,他们也成为了我的朋友;见图 1)。我开始感受到将语言学研究成果推广到聋人社区的紧迫性,并利用这些成果来挑战手语教学、手语翻译和聋人教育的假设和实践--所有这些都具有惊人的疯狂性:听力正常的人不懂土著语言,却被雇用来教授土著语言。听力翻译以聋人无法理解的方式进行手语翻译。听力教师无法与学生沟通,却把学生学习成绩差的原因归咎于他们的耳聋,而不是教师自己缺乏......
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来源期刊
Sign Language Studies
Sign Language Studies LINGUISTICS-
CiteScore
1.80
自引率
6.70%
发文量
11
期刊介绍: Sign Language Studies publishes a wide range of original scholarly articles and essays relevant to signed languages and signing communities. The journal provides a forum for the dissemination of important ideas and opinions concerning these languages and the communities who use them. Topics of interest include linguistics, anthropology, semiotics, Deaf culture, and Deaf history and literature.
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