The script phenomenon in hear-impaired verbal communication

Factual Questions
1

I once went to a place called deafchat.com

Kind of interested but what caught my attention was how certain individuals (quite many) used the verbal language in such a systematic way.

For example:
bluebarry: “from bluebarry how u are today to chris”
chris: " from chris fine how you to bluebarry"

This is interesting because they actually print out the source of the sender to the receiver of the signal. I wonder how this comes to be. Is it because they’re not educated in the use of verbal language?

I also noted that many couldn’t barely form a correct coherent sentence. It felt like talking to a very young child. Why do certain hear-impaired persons use uncommon systematic scripts instead of plain colloquial verbal words and sentences?

2

:rolleyes:

3

The icon meaning and expressing what?

4

Scorp,
You mentioned in another thread that your primary language is not English; while we Anglophones frown on the use of double-negatives (like “couldn’t barely”), I’m aware that they’re quite acceptable, even required in many other languages. From what country are you? (If you don’t tell us, you can’t make fun of us for not knowing.)

As for deaf jargon, it reflects the subtleties of sign language and includes some of the specific quirks that have arisen from it. (In Ameslan, one rarely spells out the word “you” when “u” is available.) Also, part of the function of any kind of jargon is to confound outsiders.

An episode of Law & Order hinged on whether a particular message on a TDD printer originated from a deaf or hearing writer. The writer’s unfamiliarity with deaf jargon identified him as a hearing person–and the murderer.

5

Scorpio the grammer syntax of American Sign Language is quite different than spoken English. The examples you wrote above are actually much closer to what you would expect to see signed – not spoken. It is also the proper syntax used when communicating through a Teletype device for the phone.

For example:
I would SAY: “What is your name?”
I might SIGN: “You who you?” or “What you name you?”

You would get the same patterns if you’ve ever used an operator as a go-between on a Teletype service (the hearing impaired person types, an operator translates to speech).

For example if you wanted to say to me “how are you?” You would have to type “from Scorpio how are you to Crayons.” That way it is very clear that you are asking ME how I am and not asking the Operator.

6

Yes you’ll have to be patient and tolerant with my English. I’m from Sweden and I’m still a student which means I’m learning and I do not possess the knowledge of a linguist yet.

…Interesting answer.

7

Crayons I’m aware that it clearly highlights to whom it is for and from.

However at most chat-sites the identity of the chatter is already designated in the display

For example:
Bluebarry: hello

Bluebarry is the printed source

I do not find it necessary to print the designation of the signal. The receiver is often well aware that the signal is directed towards it.

If you want to specify why not print the identity of the receiver at first then print the content in the signal?

Example:
Bluebarry: “Hey Crayons what’s up”

Now it is clear that the source is Bluebarry and the recipient is Crayons.

8

I just checked out Deafchat and none of the chatters were using the message structure you described, Scorpio. It could be that the chatters you saw were simply new to chatting. (I don’t think it was because of their TTY experience. TTY-users usually don’t specify in every message who they are addressing and who they are. In the Bell Relay conversations I’ve had, the operator does his/her best to fade into the background. Unless the TTY-user specified that a given message were for the operator, I think the operator would just assume it was for the person on the other end of the line.)

The shortforms you noted, however, are typical of TTY communication (and in chatrooms in general, for that matter) because it speeds up information transfer. If TTY-users were to type out everything they wanted to say in full, their conversations would be very long and full of awkward pauses. You can see a list of common TTY abbreviations here.

As for the grammar you noted, I think that there are two reasons for the sentence structure you saw. First, it’s a chatroom…a chatroom apparently full of teenagers (OMG!!! you want my PICTURE!!!). Hearing or Deaf, chatrooms – especially ones frequented by teenagers – and grammar don’t seem to mix. Second, the grammar of ASL differs from English because it is, in fact, a different language. From the Gallaudet website, Myth: ASL is Ungrammatical:

As the site notes, if you translated French sentences into English word for word, you wouldn’t end up with a grammatical English sentence, but that doesn’t mean that French is ungrammatical, right? :slight_smile:

9

No. I’m quite sure that most can speak and write quite coherently when they choose to.

10

I never write coherent sentences. :slight_smile:

Seriously, I spend a decent amount of time on deafchat, and rarely, if ever, notice anyone chatting like that. No more than anywhere else, but I don’t spend much time in chat, either.

Eats Crayons touched on the difference between oral language and visual (sign) - the structure is just different, they’re different languages, and they don’t translate exactly into one another. It’s hard to explain, but think of it like this - you’re not a native speaker/writer of English, and I’m pretty sure the structure of your sentences causes some natives to scratch their heads and wonder why you phrased something the way you did.

It just depends how much time a deaf person spends learning the oral/written language associated with their country or culture. I, personally, feel I have good (written) English grammar, but I know other deafs who don’t - because they’re more ingrained in the grammatical structure of ASL.

There’s a couple of other deaf posters here - stick around and notice the difference in our posting styles. We’re as diverse in style as all the hearing posters are.

11

Since you’re a speaker of Swedish, your native language is actually closer to English than American Sign Language is. Ameslan is completely unrelated to English. It doesn’t work by 1-1 matching of signs with English words, nor of 1-1 matching of grammatical patterns with English grammatical patterns.

12

I can say the same thing about what I’ve seen in chat rooms populated by individuals who apparently have normal hearing.

13

Re the grammar: I donlt kow about ASL, but BSL is largely a “topic-comment language” (i.e. you start with the subject then say things about it). English sentences, in contrast, are usually constructed as “subject verb object”, and hence the word order is different.

14

As has been mentioned, ASL has its own grammar and syntax apart from English. And so, the deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) might know two separate languages: English and ASL.

Now, written English is nearly identical to spoken English (barring it’s aberrant spellings and informal dialects). However, ASL doesn’t have a truly agreed-upon written form. How do you write down hand movements, facial expressions, and bodily gestures? Here are three ways to do it:

  1. Some use an iconic approach.

  2. Some adapt standard written English as a translation of their live ASL into written form. You wouldn’t know by their writing that they were DHH and primarily communicated in ASL in person.

  3. Some use English names for the signs in the order that they would sign them, e.g.:

OTHER REINDEER REINDEER PAST LAUGH CURSE
ALLOW NO RUDOLPH IN PLAY PLAY.

{All of the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names
they never let poor Rudolph, join in any reindeer games.}

Note how in ASL, extraneous words are ignored. A single sign (and thus, a single written word) can be translated into English many ways, depending on context and intensifiers, like facial expressions), and so, CURSE can be to mock, call names, insult, etc… The ‘poor’ of ‘poor Rudolph’ is gone in the written translation becasue if I were signing it to you, I would just look sad when I signed ‘Rudolph.’ Reindeer is repeated because that’s how you form plurals in ASL. The past tense of ‘used to laugh’ is indicated by a single sign, PAST, which means 'in the past." The ‘him’ is gone because, in the flesh, I would place RUDOLPH in a specific place in front of me, and whenever I wanted to refer to him, I would then just point to that place.

This form of transliteralism is mostly used from one DHH to another.

Now, this all leads to where I’m concluding:

The two DHHs you witnessed were probably combining standard written English with the influence of the grammar of ASL. Sort of like how some Spanish and English speakers mix the two languages into Spanglish, you were witnessing Signglish (I just made that word up).

CALM

Inglesia esta la nueva lingua franca. {A quadruple irony}

15

moriah writes:

> 3. Some use English names for the signs in the order that they
> would sign them, e.g.:
>
> OTHER REINDEER REINDEER PAST LAUGH CURSE
> ALLOW NO RUDOLPH IN PLAY PLAY.
>
> {All of the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names
> they never let poor Rudolph, join in any reindeer games.}
>
>
> Note how in ASL, extraneous words are ignored.

Note that in fact that in this example that signs in ASL have been dropped in this “written translation” of a sentence in ASL. The “sad look on the face” that means “poor” (in “poor Rudolph”) has been dropped, as the pointing in the correct direction that means “him” (as in “call him names”). These are as much a part of ASL as any of the other signs given by:

> OTHER REINDEER REINDEER PAST LAUGH CURSE
> ALLOW NO RUDOLPH IN PLAY PLAY.

This just shows how hard it is to translate from ASL to English. Even a full transcription of an ASL sentence requires a fair amount of knowledge of how the language operates.

16

Off topic:

Is it easier/more difficult for born-deaf persons who have learned both ASL and English to pick up other languages (than people who are not born with a hearing impairment)? They’ve already mastered two grammars… but then again, they’re only dealing with the more abstract written version of a spoken language, which is harder.