Antw: Fw: BSL isn't English/The Monkey & the Organ Grinder

[Franz Dotter]

Dear Raymond Lee,

It is not really for consolating you: We have such people who forgot their academic oath in the position of the highest official responsible for deaf issues in our education ministry as well as in the position of Austria's biggest deaf school in VIenna.
We have to learn from it that academics in general are neither better people than the average nor that the conflict between fundamentalists and open society people is suspended in the academic area.
The only way out is to stay open minded and have civil courage, but also to fight against people who violate human rights.

Best Regards

Franz Dotter

University of Klagenfurt
Research Center for Sign Language and Communication of the Hearing Impaired
(of the Faculty for Cultural Sciences at the Department of Linguistics and Computational Linguistics)
Funded by: Provincial government of Carinthia, Bundessozialamt Kaernten, European Social Fund
Head: Franz Dotter (hearing)
Collaborators: Elisabeth Bergmeister (deaf), Silke Bornholdt (deaf) Christian Hausch (deaf), Marlene Hilzensauer (hearing), Klaudia Krammer (hearing), Christine Kulterer (hearing), Anita Pirker (deaf), Andrea Skant (hearing), Natalie Unterberger (deaf, in period of grace).
Homepage: http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/fzgs
Deaf server (in German): http://deaf.uni-klu.ac.at
Fax: ++43 (0)463 2700 2899
Phone: ++43 (0)463 2700 /2821 (Franz Dotter), /2822 (Andrea Skant), /2823 (Marlene Hilzensauer), /2824 (Klaudia Krammer), /2829 (Christine Kulterer)
Email addresses: firstname.lastname at uni-klu.ac.at


>>> "Philocophus" <Philocophus at philocophus.demon.co.uk> 05/14 7:59  >>>
Hello,

After pressing for sources of Paulette Caswell's inspiration, I was stunned
to find that it was none other than Patrick Seamans who is her partner.

He is attending the USC and taking a PhD in an entirely different subject,
something to do with economics.

What I have really learned is that there are unscrupulous academicians
around - like Paulette and Patrick - that one has to be careful of.
Academicians by tradition are honour-bound to use all their learning for the
good of mankind and to make the world a better place to live in.

Another thing I have learned is that, because sign language studies are some
way behind traditional linguistic studies, it has quite a way to go in
catching up. This is understandable since sign language studies began in the
1960s, but for rogue Academicians to use that gap to exploit and vilify sign
language with the aim of ridiculing sign language is a sort of action that
shames the world of academia. These two persons have obviously been doing
that for at least five years - and both are unqualified in linguistics, in
the true sense of the word (- or they may have taken a course in linguistics
to a certain level; I do not know as I have washed my hands off them now).

We all must nevertheless keep an eye out for people like them, and I pray we
will never see any more like them again.

Regards
Raymond Lee

Head of Research & Publications
British Deaf History Society
Feltham  London  UK.

Philocophus at philocophus.demon.co.uk