• 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
• 夏洛特·贝克-申克（简介）

我花了很长时间，很多年，才不再梦想加劳德特语言学研究实验室（LRL）——成为比我自己更伟大的事业的一部分。心地善良、头脑聪明的同事们不知疲倦地工作，发现并记录一种被贬低的语言的复杂而精彩的结构，并在此过程中帮助减轻受压迫社区的痛苦，因为他们被告知“没有语言”语言。” LRL 一直是一个活动蜂巢，负责处理来自世界各地的人们对信息和援助的紧急请求，并且对于在加劳德特校园和其他地方工作的聋人¹来说，这是一个热情的休息场所，他们会定期出现，分享他们的痛苦经历。

但我一开始并没有意识到这场斗争。在来到 LRL 之前，我只是 20 世纪 70 年代中期加州大学伯克利分校语言学研究生，拥有心理学背景，对人们说话时的非语言行为感兴趣。一时兴起，我参加了聋人教练的手语晚间课程，并爱上了这门语言。这促使我在伯克利与一名聋人教练一起开设了一个实地考察课程，并最终要求与威廉·C·斯托科会面，并寻求在 LRL 与他一起工作的机会。在我们的第一次会议上，斯托科博士（比尔）慷慨地花了一整天的时间与我一起回答我的许多问题并分享 LRL 资源。然而，由于我无法鼓起勇气询问在 LRL 工作的情况，所以我要求第二天再来，比尔同意了。第二天，当我终于问他时，比尔以他一贯的欢迎和衷心支持作为回应。我在那里的工作是从 1975 年夏天开始的。[完第 203 页]

比尔和我最终获得了美国国家科学基金会 (NSF) 的多年资助，用于研究美国手语 (ASL) 中非手动行为的语言功能，这成为我多年来的研究领域。作为一名研究生，我也很幸运能够见到博士。Paul Ekman 和 Wallace Friesen 在加州大学旧金山分校的人类交互实验室工作，并成为他们培训一组研究生可靠使用新的面部动作编码系统 (FACS) 的开创性工作的一部分。FACS 最终成为我论文研究中使用的主要工具——对本地聋人手语者在对话中的所有面部动作（逐块肌肉）进行细致地编码。

我们花了数百个小时一遍又一遍地观看录像片段（注意每个视频“场”的变化，每秒六十个场）才能对总共三分钟的对话进行数字编码和分析！结果令人惊讶——面部动作实际上是 ASL 语法的信号主干结构，同时还提供了有关手语者影响的信息，并有助于调节轮流。正如其他手语研究人员后来证实的那样，这些视觉手势语言不仅仅是“手动”语言。它们是多通道语言，可以有效地利用身体的各种“发音器官”。

然而，通过这项工作，我开始体验到纯粹的学术追求和对用户深层次痛苦的日益认识之间的紧张关系。纯粹的学术追求是为了探索一种迷人的语言的乐趣。随着我自己的 ASL 技能的提高（感谢 Carol Padden、Ella Mae Lentz、Patrick Graybill 和 MJ Bienvenu 等聋哑同事的耐心指导，他们也成为了朋友；见图 1）。我开始感到迫切需要将语言研究成果带入聋人社区，并利用这些结果来挑战手语教学、手语翻译和聋人教育的假设和实践——所有这些都具有令人惊叹的特点。精神错乱：听到不懂土著语言但受雇教授土著语言的人的声音。听力口译员以聋人无法理解的方式进行手语。听力老师无法与学生沟通，却将学生成绩不佳归咎于他们的耳聋，而不是老师自己的缺乏……