Alumna Wins MacArthur “Genius” Grant for Sign Language Work - Georgetown College

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Alumna Wins MacArthur “Genius” Grant for Sign Language Work

November 16, 2010

Sign language expert Carol Padden (C’78) was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her outstanding contributions to the study of linguistics and signed communication.

Padden was among 23 individuals selected as 2010 MacArthur Fellows by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Also known as a “Genius” grant, the award is presented to individuals who have demonstrated originality in their work and have the potential to make important contributions to their fields. Padden is the first deaf person to be awarded a MacArthur grant, and her work on American and international sign languages has been influential to the cross disciplinary fields of linguistics and deafness. 

“It’s a tremendous honor, and I’m very grateful for the recognition,” she said. “To have gotten such surprising validation for the years of work I’ve done – it’s the best thing that [could have happened] to me.”

Although Padden’s parents and brother are also deaf, growing up she was often the only deaf student among her hearing classmates. Describing that experience as similar to being “educated abroad,” she explained that those years shaped her interest in how groups communicate. The daily transitions between school and home became opportunities to consider how people cross communication boundaries, and how languages evolve to fit the cultures that utilize them. Her parents, who were on faculty at Gallaudet University, encouraged her academic pursuits. Padden credits her mother—a professor of English Literature—with her curiosity about words and symbols. “I believe she instilled in me an interest in language from an early age,” Padden reflected.

Having established an early interest in language and communication, Padden has been researching the evolution and impact of sign languages since her years at Georgetown. She credits her undergraduate training in Linguistics as the foundation for her future research. “I wanted a solid education in linguistics and I got it,” she explained. “My professors taught me a great deal about doing science and doing good work.” Padden supplemented her classroom experience by working in the Linguistics Research Laboratory at Gallaudet University, under the guidance of Bill Stokoe, the “father” of American Sign Language (ASL) linguistics. Padden went on to receive her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she now serves as an Associate Dean of Social Sciences and as a faculty member in the Department of Communication.

Padden’s previous research concentrated on ASL, and demonstrated that signing relied upon internal structures as sophisticated as spoken or written languages. Signers reference specific subjects or verbs, for example, by creating placeholders for them in space and indicating those spaces for clarification. In addition to exploring the linguistic structure of signing, Padden has also explored the social context and historical development of sign languages, as well the challenges signers face integrating into the larger communities. Her publications include Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture (1988) and Inside Deaf Culture (2005), which she co-authored, as well as two textbooks on American Sign Language and numerous scholarly articles.

Her current work, the MacArthur Foundation explained, "focuses on the structure and evolution of sign languages—how they differ from spoken languages and from each other—and on the specific social implications of signed communications." Recently, she has been researching the emerging Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) in Israel. She and her colleagues have already demonstrated that new sign languages can quickly create sophisticated grammatical structures. With the MacArthur grant, she hopes to expand that research. “I’m working on some ideas about how languages get assembled over time to create mature grammars,” Padden explained. “I have some pretty unusual ideas about how this happens, and I will need time to do the research and writing to get them fleshed out and in publishable form.”

--University Communications, with additional research by Jessica Beckman

Watch Carol Padden discuss her research and winning the McArthur Grant here.

Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images for the MacArthur Foundation. Photo and video courtesy of and copyrighted by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

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