9410597 Wilcox ABSTRACT The investigation of signed languages is not only crucial to the understanding of the world's visual/gestural languages, but it is essential to the understanding of the biological foundations of human language. The linguistic exploration of signed languages has acquired considerable interest in recent years. Yet it is uncommon to witness large numbers of deaf linguists and deaf graduate students attending or presenting at major linguistics conferences. The main reason for this discrepancy is the extreme difficulty of accessing linguistic material of almost any nature through signed language interpreters who are unable to accurately render the conceptual content of the message. The goal of the organizers of the Linguistic Society of America's 1995 Linguistic Institute is to ensure full accessibility to the exchange of ideas and the linguistic "cultural" milieu-both inside and outside of the classroom-which are a significant part of the linguist's professional development. This project is intended to provide linguistic training to seasoned American Sign Language interpreters who will be employed during the Institute. Two graduate linguistics students will work 10 months to prepare a manual to be used for teaching purposes. A group of distinguished deaf language consultants, hearing linguists, and expert interpreters will gather for three days to prepare a structured lexicon of introductory linguistic concepts and ASL usage related to linguistic terminology. The manual will eventually be edited for the development of a videotape to be produced by Sign Media, Inc. The dissemination of this videotape will provide experienced interpreters, as well as students in interpreter education programs across the nation, broader access to accurate interpretations of a core lexicon for the complex linguistic sciences. The lexicon and the videotape will form the basis for training interpreters from a cross the nation who will be employed to interpret at the Institute, thus providing the national deaf clientele that the Institute plans to attract with interpreters who possess broader expertise than the typical local referral center may be able to provide. An additional long term benefit will be the expansion of the pool of interpreters competent to interpret linguistics lectures. The provision of the resulting videotape will have significant impact on the study of ASL by native users across the country. Ultimately, the goal of this proposal is to set a precedent for other sciences to open their doors to deaf scientists by providing adequately trained interpreters. ***
