Carl Croneberg, Explorer of Deaf Culture, Dies at 92

Carl Croneberg, a deaf Swedish immigrant who helped write the primary complete dictionary of American Signal Language and was the primary to stipulate the concept of Deaf tradition as a definite a part of society and one value learning, died on Aug. 11. He was 92.

His dying was introduced by Gallaudet College in Washington, D.C., the one college for the hearing-impaired in america, the place he earned a level and spent his whole profession. The college didn’t specify the trigger or say the place he died.

Mr. Croneberg was a brand new member of the Gallaudet school when, in 1957, the linguist William C. Stokoe Jr., himself just lately arrived on campus, recruited him to affix his new Linguistics Analysis Laboratory. Till the late Nineteen Fifties, many linguists had dismissed signal language as a poor substitute for spoken language, a inflexible, imprecise system of gestures that left no room for nuance.

Dr. Stokoe, who was listening to, believed in any other case, although he had gone to Gallaudet with no earlier coaching in signal language and no actual publicity to a Deaf neighborhood — his specialty was Center English.

But it didn’t take lengthy for him to verify his hunch. Whereas present process a crash course in American Signal Language, he observed that the indicators he was studying at school have been generally totally different from what his college students have been utilizing amongst themselves.

The distinction, he was advised, was slang — and in that distinction he noticed the capability for A.S.L. to be each bit as capacious as spoken language. Dr. Stokoe dedicated himself to growing a script, and from that, a dictionary. However to take action he wanted colleagues with native-speaker expertise.

He selected Mr. Croneberg and a second colleague, Dorothy Casterline, each younger instructors at Gallaudet, not solely due to their intelligence, but additionally as a result of, in a approach, they have been outsiders, too: Mr. Croneberg grew up in Sweden, Ms. Casterline in Hawaii.

That made it doable for them to each analyze the language in a approach that Dr. Stokoe couldn’t entry, but additionally look at its use with a certain quantity of detachment.

Mr. Croneberg’s cost was to evaluate how Deaf folks deploy signal language in on a regular basis life and across the nation. He traveled all through New England and the South, interviewing Deaf residents and conducting ethnographic investigations, being attentive to how the language knowledgeable their lives.

What he discovered might not have shocked his analysis topics, but it surely astounded different linguists. He recognized important regional variations; the signal for cheese, for instance, was totally different in Washington, D.C., and Virginia. Catholics and Protestants had totally different phrases for a similar spiritual objects. And he discovered totally different dialects amongst young and old, and between Black and white folks.

“The neighborhood of Deaf individuals who use signal language and who’ve roughly frequent social contact with one another extends throughout North America,” he wrote. “However the entire divides into native and regional teams which will be mapped geographically.”

Mr. Croneberg revealed his outcomes as two appendices to “A Dictionary of American Signal Language on Linguistic Rules” (1965), which he wrote with Dr. Stokoe and Ms. Casterline, and which grew to become a seminal textual content amongst Deaf students.

“Stokoe wouldn’t have been in a position to do the work with out his colleagues, Carl and Dorothy,” Pamela Wright, who teaches linguistics at Gallaudet, mentioned in an e mail. “It was an ideal mixture of abilities that pulled collectively to review A.S.L. as an genuine language. Stokoe didn’t know indicators, he was nonetheless studying, and Carl and Dorothy have been his connection to the neighborhood.”

Ever the linguist, Mr. Croneberg noticed American Signal Language because the core of what he coined “Deaf tradition,” a time period that later generations of researchers constructed into a complete discipline of examine. And he was among the many first to stipulate Black American Signal Language as a definite dialect.

In recognition of their contributions, Gallaudet introduced Mr. Croneberg and Ms. Casterline with honorary levels in Might 2022.

“Deaf students like those who stand earlier than us right this moment are having fun with alternatives for a greater life because of the painstaking analysis carried out within the Nineteen Fifties and early Nineteen Sixties by Mr. Croneberg and his colleagues,” the college mentioned in asserting the awards.

Carl Gustav Arvid Olof Croneberg was born on April 26, 1930, in Norrbacka, a small city about 30 miles northeast of Stockholm. Deaf from start, he was despatched by his dad and mom to a specialised college, the place, along with studying Swedish signal language at school, he taught himself written English and German by way of a correspondence college.

An opportunity encounter with Leonard M. Elstad, the president of Gallaudet, who was touring in Europe, persuaded Mr. Croneberg to return to America to review on the college, in line with analysis by Carey Ballard, a doctoral scholar in linguistics at Boston College. Mr. Croneberg arrived in 1951 and graduated with a level in English 4 years later.

He was instantly employed as a junior school member whereas he took graduate research on the close by Catholic College of America. He acquired a grasp’s diploma in English there in 1959, however regardless of excessive grades and Dr. Stokoe’s sturdy suggestion, he was not admitted to the college’s doctoral program in anthropology as a result of its director thought it might be too tough for a deaf individual.

He continued to show English at Gallaudet, and over time grew to become an inspiration for a brand new era of linguists and students of Deaf research, who created packages and departments at Boston College; California State College, Northridge; and different establishments.

Mr. Croneberg retired in 1986. Survivors embody his spouse, Eleanor (Wetzel) Croneberg, and his daughter, Lisa Croneberg.