A Life of Science

Many linguists choose their discipline because of childhood experiences with languages. I had grown up using American Sign Language and had spent my childhood with Deaf people, but I had no models of how to become a linguist working with sign languages. This area of linguistics was just coming into being, and my models were other scientists who were just as new to this field as I was. This is not a complete account of my work over the course of my career, nor of all the mentors and colleagues who have touched my life and influenced my work. Instead, it is a selective account that traces a life of science built during a period of profound cultural changes in the lives of Deaf people and their sign languages.