DOMINIC W. MASSARO, editor
University of California, Santa Cruz

Sign Language Research: Past, Present, and Future

Language, Cognition, and the Brain: Insights From Sign Language Research
By Karen Emmorey. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002. 400 pp. Cloth, $99.95; Paper, $39.95.

In 1960, William Stokoe published a seminal paper in which he took the approach that signed languages, like other languages, possess linguistic structure that can be analyzed (Stokoe, 1960). This simple assumption, now taken so much for granted, was revolutionary. Stokoe's work had the effect of granting permission to linguists and psycholinguists to treat sign language as a legitimate topic of analysis, thus launching a whole new research enterprise. Reaction to Stokoe's work started slowly, but the trickle soon turned into a stream and then a flood, indicating just how much was waiting to be learned from this previously ignored subject. The intervening four decades have turned the topic of sign language and deafness into not only a major subdiscipline in its own right but also a powerful tool for addressing broader questions in cognitive science.