Ceil Lucas (born March 19, 1951) is an American linguist. Lucas is a ''

professor emerita ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

'' of

Gallaudet University Gallaudet University ( ) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. It was founded in 1864 as a grammar school for both deaf and blind children. It was the first sc ...

. Lucas was a professor in the Department of Linguistics at Gallaudet University until her retirement in 2014. Lucas is currently the editor of ''

Sign Language Studies ''Sign Language Studies'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering basic and applied research relating to sign languages used throughout the world. It was established in 1972 with William Stokoe of Gallaudet University as founding edi ...

'' at

Gallaudet University Press Gallaudet University Press (GUPress) is a publisher that focuses on issues relating to deafness and sign language. It is a part of Gallaudet University in Washington D.C., and was founded in 1980 by the university's Board of Trustees. The press is ...

, a position she's held since 2009. Lucas is known for her contributions to the field of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, most notably in the research of

American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...

Early life

Lucas was born in the United States but raised from ages five through twenty-one in Guatemala City and in Rome, Italy. Lucas studied at

Whitman College Whitman College is a private liberal arts college in Walla Walla, Washington. The school offers 53 majors and 33 minors in the liberal arts and sciences, and it has a student-to-faculty ratio of 9:1. Whitman was the first college in the Pacifi ...

in Walla Walla, Washington, and received her BA in French and art history. Later, she earned her M.S. and PhD in linguistics from

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

Career

In 1973, Lucas started teaching Italian and continues to do so. Lucas began teaching at Gallaudet University in 1981 and, alongside Robert Johnson and Scott Liddell, was one of the inaugural faculty to teach in the university's new linguistics graduate program. During her tenure at Gallaudet, Lucas served as

principal investigator In many countries, the term principal investigator (PI) refers to the holder of an independent grant and the lead researcher for the grant project, usually in the sciences, such as a laboratory study or a clinical trial. The phrase is also often us ...

on two research projects in the field of sign language linguistics. The first of these was the large-scale project ''Sociolinguistic Variation In ASL'' (funded by the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

Grant Numbers: SBR 9310116, SBR 9709522). The results of this study are summarized in the book ''Sociolinguistic Variation in American Sign Language'' (2001). (Results of its pilot study are discussed in the introductory chapter of ''Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities'' (1995).) The second project became titled ''The History and Structure of

Black ASL Black American Sign Language (BASL) or Black Sign Variation (BSV) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used most commonly by deaf African Americans in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregatio ...

'' (funded by

The Spencer Foundation The Spencer Foundation was established in 1962 by Lyle M. Spencer. This foundation makes grants to support research in areas of education that are widely construed. Founder Lyle M. Spencer was the founder of The Spencer Foundation. Spencer gre ...

and NSF, Grant Numbers: BCS-0813736, DRL-0936085). The results of this study are summarized in the book ''The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: Its History and Structure'' (2011). Lucas also holds an M.A. from the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

. Lucas was awarded ''professor emerita'' status in 2014.

Bibliography

* Lucas, Ceil (ed.). 1990.
Sign Language Research: Theoretical Issues
'. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. * Lucas, Ceil, and

Clayton Valli Clayton Valli (May 25, 1951 – March 7, 2003) was an American prominent deaf linguist and American Sign Language (ASL) poet whose work helped further to legitimize ASL and introduce people to the richness of American Sign Language literatur ...

. 1992.
Language Contact in the American Deaf Community
'. Academic Press. * Lucas, Ceil (ed.). 1995.

'. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. , . * Lucas, Ceil (ed.). 1996.

'. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. . * Lucas, Ceil (ed.). 1998.

'. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. , . * Lucas, Ceil, Robert Bayley, and

. 2001.
Sociolinguistic Variation in American Sign Language
'. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. , . * Lucas, Ceil (ed.). 2001. ''The Sociolinguistics of Sign Languages''. Cambridge University Press. * Lucas, Ceil, Robert Bayley, and

. 2003.
What's Your Sign for Pizza?: An Introduction to Variation in American Sign Language
'. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. . * Lucas, Ceil (ed.). 2002.

'. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. , . * Lucas, Ceil (ed.). 2003.

'. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. . * Valli, Clayton, Ceil Lucas, Kristin J. Mulrooney, and Miako N.P. Rankin. 2011.
Linguistics of American Sign Language: An Introduction
'. 5th edition. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. . * McCaskill, Carolyn, Ceil Lucas, Robert Bayley, and Joseph Hill. 2011.
The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: Its History and Structure
''. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. . * Bayley, Robert, Richard Cameron, and Ceil Lucas. 2013.
The Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics
'. Oxford University Press. * Schembri, Adam C., and Ceil Lucas. 2015.
Sociolinguistics and Deaf Communities
'. Cambridge University Press.

References

External links

Gallaudet Video Library, Linguistic Video Collection
(This collection contains video data from both the Sociolinguistic Variation In ASL and The History and Structure of Black ASL projects.) {{DEFAULTSORT:Lucas, Ceil 1951 births Living people Linguists from the United States Women linguists Whitman College alumni Gallaudet University faculty Academic journal editors Georgetown University alumni