Dorothy Casterline, who as a younger researcher at Gallaudet College within the early Sixties helped write the primary complete dictionary of American Signal Language, a ebook that revolutionized the research of Deaf tradition, died on Aug. 8 in Irmo, S.C. She was 95.

Pamela Decker Wright, a professor at Gallaudet, the one college designed for the deaf or exhausting of listening to in the US, stated Mrs. Casterline died, in a hospital, from problems of a fall.

As an undergraduate English main at Gallaudet, in Washington, within the late Fifties, Mrs. Casterline, who had misplaced her listening to at 13, caught the eye of a professor named William Stokoe. Along with educating literature, Dr. Stokoe was investigating the grammar and syntax of signal language, which on the time was thought-about nothing greater than a gestural by-product of spoken English.

Dr. Stokoe believed that there was way more to it. His objective, which he realized in 1965 with Mrs. Casterline and one other professor, Carl Croneberg, as co-authors, was to compile the primary systematic dictionary of what they got here to name American Signal Language.

“The ebook was Invoice’s thought, however Carl and Dorothy did a lot of the work,” Professor Wright stated.

Dr. Stokoe had the imaginative and prescient, however he additionally had an issue: Not solely was he listening to, however he had by no means studied signal language earlier than arriving at Gallaudet in 1955.

Mrs. Casterline was one among his star college students, who “wrote essays higher than nine-tenths of the listening to college students whose papers I had learn for a dozen years elsewhere,” he wrote within the journal Signal Language Research in 1993.

She was additionally one thing of an outsider, even among the many deaf college students at Gallaudet. Having been born in Hawaii to Japanese American dad and mom, she was among the many first college students of shade on the faculty — and, Professor Wright stated, probably the primary individual of shade to hitch the college.

She graduated with honors in 1958. She then joined the English school as an teacher and labored as a researcher with Dr. Stokoe’s Linguistics Analysis Laboratory, alongside Mr. Croneberg, who was additionally deaf. (Dr. Stokoe died in 2000. Mr. Croneberg died in 2022.)

With a grant from the Nationwide Science Basis, the trio filmed hundreds of hours of interviews with individuals from all walks of life: kids and school college students, women and men, Northerners and Southerners.

It was the duty of Mrs. Casterline, who had wonderful, exact handwriting, to transcribe the interviews after which use a specialised typewriter to compile and annotate them. She labored late into the evening and on weekends, typically along with her new child son in a single arm.

The outcome was an enormous assortment of indicators, which, they argued in “A Dictionary of American Signal Language on Linguistic Ideas” (1965), constituted not a variant of English however a language unto itself, with its personal guidelines. The dictionary organized its entries by hand formations, not by the alphabetical order of their English equivalents.

It was not instantly welcome, both within the Deaf neighborhood or amongst linguists usually. The concept that signal language was merely a visible, gestural adjunct to spoken language was too ingrained.

“We’ve at all times had — and proceed to nonetheless have — photos for example how an indication is made, so we’re conditioned to consider American Signal Language as an image language,” Mrs. Casterline advised Jane Maher, the writer of “Seeing Language in Signal: The Work of William C. Stokoe” (1996). “Seeing these unusual symbols for the primary time may be daunting.”

However by the Eighties, the dictionary had develop into a cornerstone of a sturdy rising cultural id.

“I really feel that if the ebook hadn’t been revealed,” Professor Wright stated, “I’m not positive the place we’d be now.”

Dorothy Chiyoko Sueoka was born in Honolulu on April 27, 1928. Her father, Toshie Sueoka, was a stonemason and ironworker, and her mom, Takiyo (Yanagikara) Sueoka, was a housemaid.

Dorothy, who was generally known as Dot, misplaced her listening to in seventh grade, although she by no means knew why. She accomplished highschool at what’s now the Hawaii College for the Deaf and Blind. Whereas there, she efficiently lobbied the Honolulu police to stop barring deaf residents from driving vehicles.

She spent three years after highschool working to save cash to attend Gallaudet; on the time, solely college students who lived within the 48 states may obtain monetary help. She enrolled in 1955 and graduated three years later.

She married James Casterline, who died in 2012. She is survived by three grandchildren. Her sons, Jonathan and Rex, died earlier than her.

After engaged on the dictionary, Mrs. Casterline left Gallaudet to lift her household. She additionally labored for an organization that added captions to traditional films.

Years later, she remained happy with her work with Dr. Stokoe and Mr. Croneberg.

She helped write the dictionary, she advised Ms. Maher, “to indicate that deaf individuals may be studied as linguistic and cultural communities, and never solely as unlucky victims with comparable bodily and sensory pathologies.”