• A Conversation among Four Deaf Linguists
• Benjamin Bahan (bio), Carol Padden (bio), Ted Supalla (bio), and Lars Wallin (bio)

In October of 2022, the four of us—Ben Bahan, Carol Padden, Ted Supalla, and Lars Wallin—began a series of free-ranging conversations about how we built our linguistic careers as the new field of sign language studies was dawning. We were among those deaf scientists who wrote our doctoral dissertations on sign language structure after the 1965 publication of the Dictionary of the American Sign Language by William Stokoe, Dorothy Casterline, and Carl Croneberg. Ted Supalla received his PhD in 1982, and his dissertation was one of the first on the structure of American Sign Language (ASL). Carol followed in 1983, also completing a dissertation on ASL structure. Lars Wallin completed his in 1994 on Swedish Sign Language (SSL) and Ben Bahan, two years later in 1996, adding to the growing number of dissertations on ASL. Carol, Ben, and Ted were PhD students at American universities (UC San Diego and Boston University), while Lars completed his PhD at Stockholm University. Throughout our conversation, we compared notes about doctoral studies in the United States and Europe.

We held three video conversations over a period of two months. After the second conversation, we decided to focus on three key questions: [End Page 290]

Lars Wallin and Carol Padden (top row) with Ben Bahan and Ted Supalla (bottom row) in their 2022 Zoom conversation.

1. 1. How did we choose to enter the field of linguistics and the study of human language and cognition?

2. 2. How did we build our careers, beginning with our PhD training, given that there were almost no deaf or hearing models of how to be a sign language linguist?

3. 3. What challenges do we see still ahead for young deaf scholars planning their own careers in science?

What follows is extracted from a transcription of our signed conversation, edited for continuity and clarity—as well as keeping us on track. It was amusing, but also sobering, when we looked back at our early struggles to become scientists. We labored to make connections between what we learned about spoken languages to what we intuitively understood about our sign languages. There were few publications we could read about ASL, SSL, or any other sign language, and even fewer tools for deep analysis of sign language structure. More fundamentally, we had no deaf models for who we were trying to become. Looking back, we now see more clearly than we did as young students that our hearing advisors and mentors—some of whom are now deceased—likewise had few models for how to work with us or any deaf student, or any sign language, for that matter. We made mistakes, but all of us wanted to do good science. This is a candid history of an emerging science involving deaf people in our lifetimes. [End Page 291]

As we look back on our long careers, we stand in awe at the quantity and the richness of work that is done by each new generation of deaf and hearing scientists about sign languages and their communities. The study of sign language now extends to nearly every corner of the globe, and it involves so many different research groups producing vastly more data, making more discoveries, and contributing more publications and videos than we could have imagined back in the 1980s and 1990s. We hope what we share here about our lives will humanize what it means to do science about deaf and hearing people in this world.

I knew in high school I wanted to pursue a career in linguistics. My mother taught English literature at Gallaudet, and I saw her as a good role model. I knew I wanted to study language, but it was not until I met someone who had talked about linguistics as a new emerging field that I realized this was what I wanted to do, a science of language. I think I was about sixteen or seventeen years old in 1972 when someone first fingerspelled the word linguistics to me.

I had heard...

• 四位聋人语言学家的对话
• 本杰明·巴汉（个人简介）、卡罗尔·帕登（个人简介）、特德·苏帕拉（个人简介）和拉斯·沃林（个人简介）

2022 年 10 月，我们四人——本·巴汉 (Ben Bahan)、卡罗尔·帕登 (Carol Padden)、特德·苏帕拉 (Ted Supalla) 和拉斯·沃林 (Lars Wallin)——开始了一系列自由对话，讨论随着手语研究新领域的出现，我们如何建立我们的语言职业生涯。1965 年威廉·斯托科 (William Stokoe)、多萝西·卡斯特林 (Dorothy Casterline) 和卡尔·克罗恩伯格 (Carl Croneberg) 出版了《美国手语词典》后，我们就成为了撰写有关手语结构的博士论文的聋哑科学家之一。Ted Supalla 于 1982 年获得博士学位，他的论文是第一篇关于美国手语 (ASL) 结构的论文。1983 年，卡罗尔也完成了一篇关于 ASL 结构的论文。Lars Wallin 于 1994 年完成了瑞典手语 (SSL) 和 Ben Bahan 的论文，两年后的 1996 年，ASL 论文数量不断增加。卡罗尔、本和特德是美国大学（加州大学圣地亚哥分校和波士顿大学）的博士生，而拉斯在斯德哥尔摩大学完成了博士学位。在整个谈话过程中，我们交换了有关美国和欧洲博士研究的笔记。

我们在两个月的时间内进行了三次视频对话。第二次谈话后，我们决定重点讨论三个关键问题：[完第290页]

Lars Wallin 和 Carol Padden（上排）与 Ben Bahan 和 Ted Supalla（下排）进行 2022 年 Zoom 对话。

1. 1. 我们是如何选择进入语言学和人类语言与认知研究领域的？

2. 2. 鉴于几乎没有关于如何成为一名手语语言学家的聋哑或听力模型，我们如何从博士培训开始建立我们的职业生涯？

3. 3. 对于年轻的聋哑学者来说，他们在规划自己的科学生涯时还面临着哪些挑战？

以下内容摘自我们签名对话的转录，经过编辑以保持连续性和清晰度，并让我们保持在正轨上。当我们回顾自己早期成为科学家的奋斗历程时，这很有趣，但也发人深省。我们努力将我们所学到的口语知识与我们直观地理解的手语知识联系起来。我们能读到的关于 ASL、SSL 或任何其他手语的出版物很少，用于深入分析手语结构的工具就更少了。更根本的是，我们没有为自己想要成为的聋哑人树立榜样。回顾过去，我们现在比年轻学生时更清楚地看到，我们的听力顾问和导师（其中一些人现已去世）同样没有多少模型来指导我们或任何聋哑学生或任何手语的工作。事情。我们犯了错误，但我们所有人都想做好科学研究。这是一部涉及我们有生之年聋人的新兴科学的坦率历史。[完第291页]

当我们回顾我们漫长的职业生涯时，我们对每一代新一代聋哑和听力科学家在手语及其社区方面所做的大量和丰富的工作感到敬畏。手语研究现在几乎扩展到全球每个角落，它涉及许多不同的研究小组，产生了更多的数据，做出了更多的发现，并贡献了更多的出版物和视频，比我们在 20 世纪 80 年代和 90 年代所能想象的还要多。我们希望我们在这里分享的关于我们生活的内容能够使对这个世界上聋人和听力正常的人进行科学研究的意义变得人性化。

我在高中时就知道我想从事语言学职业。我的母亲在加劳德教授英国文学，我认为她是一个很好的榜样。我知道我想研究语言，但直到我遇到一个将语言学视为一个新兴领域的人，我才意识到这就是我想做的事情，一门语言科学。我想 1972 年，当有人第一次向我拼出“语言学”这个词时，我大约十六岁或十七岁。

我曾听说...