When Carol Padden saw a missed call from an unknown number on her video relay phone, she thought nothing of it and left off calling back until the next day. But when the phone rang again with the same number, Padden answered and received news from the sign language interpreter that would change her life.

Last Tuesday, the UCSD communications professor and sign language scholar was awarded a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation Grant for her “creativity, originality and potential to make important contributions in the future.” The MacArthur award, often called a “genius grant,” is a no strings attached reward to be used however the recipient wishes.

“The person identified himself as from the MacArthur Foundation, and I thought at first that they were calling to ask me to write a letter for them,” she said in an e-mail. “It caught me entirely by surprise.”

This year, Padden is one of 23 researchers nationwide to receive the award for her work, all of whom were chosen through a series of anonymous nomination by peers.

Padden has worked in the UCSD Communications Department since receiving her doctorate in linguistics here in 1983. She currently teaches courses to hearing undergraduate and graduate students on topics ranging from mind and culture to language globalization. Because she is Deaf, Padden uses an interpreter who speaks as she signs.

The researcher bases her career on “the study of sign languages and what they teach us about the nature of human languages.”
Eight years ago, Padden accidentally discovered a new sign language in a Bedouin village that had existed for about three generations. She has watched as it developed sentences, words and complex grammatical structure out of hand and body gestures.

Seeing this kind of language evolve all on its own allowed Padden and her colleagues to “test theories about how a symbol emerges, is conventionalized and then spread throughout a community to become a part of a larger language system,” as well as “develop artificial language models to compare with what we observe emerging naturally in a community.”

Her other groundbreaking work includes research on language building in communities, as well as looking into finger spelling as a means of increasing literacy in young, signing Deaf children.

Padden has also received acclaim for her work on sign language syntax. Her dissertation, for example, suggested that ASL uses a three-part pattern of plain verbs, special verbs and agreement verbs, clarifying misconceptions about the grammatical use of visual space.

Padden was born to Deaf parents, both members of the Gallaudet University faculty, and attended a school for Deaf children until she switched to a special program for hard-of-hearing children in the third grade. This early exposure to both the hearing and non-hearing world was a major catalyst for her current work.

“I’ve always been interested in human language in general, and sign languages, specifically,” she said. “Communication is fundamental to my life, and it is natural that I would be drawn to the study of communication and language. I see my job as describing how language can be both unusual — as a sign language — and natural, as all human languages are.”

Although Padden admits that maintaining relationships with sign language users in exotic places can be challenging, she hopes to continue working in the field in the future and to continue her travels in hopes of better understanding other signing cultures.

Padden has not said what she plans to do with the large and unrestricted MacArthur Foundation grant, but the magnitude of the award itself is a sure sign that silence is indeed golden.