The Sign institute
and Its Derivatives: A Family of Culturally Important ASL Signs
The sign institute is the source
of a family of ASL signs that are used to refer to residential schools for deaf
children and to other institutions. The members of the institute sign
family�although initialized�are well-established within the Deaf community and,
importantly, are used to refer to highly-valued aspects of Deaf culture. This is
true despite the fact that initialized signs are sometimes rejected within the
Deaf community. We examine the etymology of the sign institute and suggest two
plausible hypotheses for its origin. In analyzing the etymology of the sign
institute and its derivatives, we consider historical changes in how state
residential schools for deaf children were named in the United States.
Back to the Top
Identifying Recurring Depiction in ASL
Presentations
By using depiction, language users are able to provide information about what an
entity or event is like, what it looks like, or even what it acts like. When
giving a presentation, signers may use and reuse instances of depiction and may
switch from one instance to another. In an examination of 160 minutes of video
of American Sign Language (ASL) presentations,1 the presenters averaged twenty
instances of depiction (of varying lengths) per minute. The high occurrence of
depiction in these ASL presentations suggests that it is necessary to be able to
recognize depiction in ASL discourse. In this article I introduce the term
depiction as it relates to ASL, provide examples, and report on changes that aid
in identifying depiction, particularly recurring depiction, in ASL
presentations. I describe my analysis of the nonmanual changes (e.g., change in
direction of eye gaze) that occur just prior to and at the onset of depiction
and also discuss manual changes.
Back to the Top
Coordinating the Chain of Utterances:
An Analysis of Communicative Flow and Turn Taking in an Interpreted Group
Dialogue for Deaf-Blind Persons
This article explains how interpreters for deaf-blind people coordinate and
express turn-taking signals in an interpreted dialogue. Empirical materials are
derived from a video-ethnographic study of an interpreted-mediated board meeting
with five deaf-blind participants. The results show that the interpreters
provide access to visual and auditory signals for orientation and attention,
exchange miniresponse signals, and actively take part in the negotiation of
turns. As a result of these action patterns, a sequential order of interaction
is established in the dialogue, and despite their inability to see or hear one
another, the board members participate actively, and communication flows.
Back to the Top
Eye Gaze in Creative Sign Language
This article discusses the role of eye gaze in creative sign language.
Because eye gaze conveys various types of linguistic and poetic information,
it is an intrinsic part of sign language linguistics in general
and of creative signing in particular. We discuss various functions of
eye gaze in poetic signing and propose a classification of gaze behaviors
based on the observation of a number of poems in British Sign
Language and Swedish Sign Language.
Back to the Top
A Stronger Reason for the Right to Sign
Languages
Is the right to sign language only the right to a minority language? Holding a
capability (not a disability) approach, and building on the psycholinguistic
literature on sign language acquisition, I make the point that this right is of
a stronger nature, since only sign languages can guarantee that each deaf child
will properly develop the linguistic and cognitive potentialities with whom
(s)he is endowed at birth. So, the right to sign language is also the right to
the integrity of the person.
Back to the Top
