Black ASL Team receives prestigious award at LSA annual meeting

The Black American Sign Language (ASL) research team received the Linguistics, Language, and the Public award during the Linguistic Society of America annual meeting last week. According to the LSA website, this award honors an individual or group for work that effectively increases public awareness and understanding of linguistics and language. In its announcement, LSA said that “The Black ASL Project is exemplary in increasing public awareness and understanding of linguistics and to sociohistorical factors contributing to BASL. The work effectively increases public awareness of language use in African American communities, and it inspires communities to work to continue to celebrate and maintain BASL. That work inspires movement from awareness to action—the kind of impact linguistics should have in communities all over the world! In a word, it is an excellent example of work by linguists that informs the public.”

Dr. Ceil Lucas, professor emerita at Gallaudet University, and Dr. Joseph C. Hill, G-’04 & PhD ’11, a professor and administrator at Rochester Institute of Technology, accepted the award on behalf of the team. Other team members are Dr. Carolyn D. McCaskill, ’77, G-’79, & PhD ’05, Professor of Deaf Studies and Director of the Center for Black Deaf Studies; and Dr. Robert Bayley, professor of linguistics at the University of California at Davis.

Heartiest congratulations!