William Stokoe Timeline

1919- William C. Stokoe Jr. was born on July 21 in New Hampshire. 2 1937- He attended Wells College with the in the intention to study physical chemistry, but he decided that it consumed too much time and money and decided to study English instead. 1946- William Stokoe receives his Ph.D. in English and teaches at Wells College for seven years. 2 1955- William Stokoe is hired as the head of the Department of English at Gallaudet College. It was a year later he was first exposed to deaf people signing. Stokoe decides to research signing because, unlike the opinions of many of his colleagues, he viewed signing as its own distinctive language. 2 1957- Stokoe receives a research grant from the American Council of Learned Societies to begin analyzing ASL as a language. Two years later, The National Science Foundation continued the funding for his study. 1-2 1960- Stokoe publishes his first book on the research he conducted on signing, titled Sign Language Structure: An Outline of the Visual Communication Systems of the American Deaf. 1-2 1965- Stokoe, along with Carl Croneberge and Dorothy Casterline, published his second book A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles. This book includes Stokoe’s development of a written notation for ASL. This book also helped Stokoe’s ideas gain wide acceptance and prove the legitimacy of sign language as an independent, fully developed language. 1-2 1971- Gallaudet University established a Linguistic Research Lab with Stokoe as the director until 1984. In the same year, he starts the publication of the newsletter, “Signs of Our Times”.1-2 - The first presentation of information about ASL takes place at the conference held by James Woodward, at the Linguistics Society of America. Two years later, the Linguistic Society of America creates a section for sign languages to be included in their conference. 1 1975- The Communicative

References: 1. ASL Timeline. (2006, May 15). Linguistics and Dialects of American Sign Language. Retrieved September 29, 2012, from http://buaslbutterfly.tripod.com/id7.html 2. William C. Stokoe Jr. (n.d.). Angelfire: Welcome to Angelfire. Retrieved September 29, 2012, from http://www.angelfire.come/ut/stelok/Stokoe.html