Let's ask ourselves honestly here. People are saying that ASL is on the rise. Sure, but to what extent compared to PSE or even SEE? Which ones of the signing format would be on the rise in a much bigger way? In short, which ones are the popular signing format used the most? Before I continue let's watch a video of an astronaut signing in space last year.
Now, is that astronaut signing in a SEE, PSE fashion or completely in ASL? (note: you will have to go to the original YouTube page to see the closed captioned part by clicking on the YouTube screen here).
Next, let's watch Gnarly Dorkette's video she made 2 years ago of her signing explaining CDI's role and requirement when it comes to English understanding and competency, PSE, SEE, and ASL.
Now, is her signing done in an ASL, PSE or SEE format?(note, click on the YouTube video to see her transcript of her signing).
Next, let's watch a video of a person demonstrating the four different ways of signing the same Billy Goat story using SEE, Signed English, PSE and ASL so you can see the evolving differences where it goes from following in English word order and grammar to a completely different grammar structure in ASL.
Now, having seen all the videos, which I hope you sincerely did watch and review them all, what would you consider the astronaut's signed input be like? And ask yourself if her signing accurately portrays how most signers tend to sign in. And, if so, then wouldn't her signing format be the one that's on the rise and be deserved special recognition?
If you call the astronaut's mode of signing as PSE then you cannot call the astronaut's signing as "ASL," right? But if you call her signing as "ASL" then it goes against conventional wisdom according to the Billy Gruff story signing examples because her signing was done in English word order and grammar.
So, which ones is it that's on the rise when it comes to signing?
Have fun.
9 comments:
thanks,
Good Education for me!
If ASL is on the rise, what did American deaf use before ? The rise in BSL in the UK is down to hearing learning it...
I thought it'll be good for the linguistic students to study many different kinds of methods.
DVTV, other than the youtube.com, is the best place for those students to take a huge advantage for what? Studying. It's on the purpose for them to do their thesis/dissertations. I assure you that they will use their videos to demonstrate the students in the classroom as well.
Not because they will compare the individual.
White Ghost
Definitely PSE is on the rise.
At a recent conference I went to, one of the discussion we had outside of the workshops and presentations was about language preference and the majority preferred PSE.
Mike,
That was interesting to see tremendous differences in sign languages. The first video is definitely, transliteration/PSE. The second video with the CDI is PSE/ASL. It is difficult to have a pure sign language. We are asking what is exactly pure ASL language. Anyhow, interesting perspectives, though.
WisDeaf
Mike,
It was an interesting presentation about the differences of sign languages. First video was definitely a more of transliteration because she was signing verbatim along with lots of fingerspellings. The second video is a mixture of PSE/ASL. I do agree with the CDI interpreter, who have to be very flexible to many forms of sign languages to be able to interpret for a variety of people, who utilized different modalities of communication.
The last video was very interesting and can tell the differences; however, sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish which sign language they are utilizing. In other words, it can be confusing.
WisDeaf
I do sign PSE unless sign ASL when needed...
Love to sign full ASL but been sign PSE for long time... OLD HABIT!
the first person, the NASA astronaut, is hearing and obviously new at signing. she wasn't fluent, and was probably reading from a script in English. she made several errors (important/information), and fingerspelled words that there are signs for. I would have liked to see a deaf person signing PSE. I'm sure you could find some. oh hey - how about Dr. Don Grushkin? bet he'd love to be your model. haha.
the second example of GnarlyDorkette I would say is much more ASL and minimal PSE. One clue is that she didn't mouth many words in English. she used a ton of non-manual signals (NMS), grammatically correct ASL, and probably classifiers as well. You will not see PSE users doing this very much.
the third video is a stage presentation, and so the register was very formal. that situation will have an affect on the "ASL-ness" of the samples. For example, a native ASL signer would have used a lot more NMS when telling the story to a group of deaf children. I highly doubt that a native ASL storyteller would have pointed to her three fingers to indicate there were 3 billy goats for a child audience. plus, all the signers were hearing and I doubt they were native signers, except maybe Dr. Hayes could be a CODA. I admit I didn't watch the entire video because I thought they were all really boring speakers, tell you the truth. Makes me appreciate all the more the visual appeal of ASL (the real thing, that is, as exemplified by gnarlydorkette).
But I like your concept of displaying 3 signing styles for discussion. watching someone sign in zero gravity was cool! Tracy's ponytail floating in the air was more fascinating than what she said!
anonymous #2
BarbDiGi made a vlog of her resignation from DBC. I think her video is a perfect example of a deaf person who is really more comfortable signing PSE trying to sign ASL. You can tell because she is making a big effort not to mouth English words. Her lips are pinched in an unnatural way a lot of the time. That's not normal in an ASL signer. Mouth movements in ASL rarely mouth English words but have specific expressions related to the context. (like "Pah!" for "finally.") Also, the structure of her ASL usage is not correct, and that's probably because she's reading from an English script. If she'd written her script in ASL it would have "looked" more like ASL.
For the record, I think Barb DiGi signs beautifully in PSE. She includes lots of ASL features but at the same time mouths English words. nothing wrong with that whatsoever.
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