Words in Hand

I'm sure you were able to get some information from that. I expect you realize that Clark was talking about a trip on a boat. I know myself, from the previous section, that he's talking about a trip to the Orkneys. He's really on a ferry, but I wonder if you were able to extract other information? Perhaps from the very pictorial information. Let's start with a pictorial sign, the sign BOAT itself is a very pictorial sign. The linguistic term is 'Iconic' and because this is an important concept in relation to sign language, it's worth giving it to you. If the sign is 'Iconic' that means there's a link between the way the sign is made and what it means. So in the sign BOAT we can say the hands give an indication of the shape of the boat. But probably we're also getting some important information from the way that the hands are moving, showing the movement of the boat through the water. We can actually modify this sign in different ways to show other kinds of information.

At the beginning of the extract Clark shows the way that the boat moves out of the harbour. So the signer shows the actual direction the boat is moving, how fast it's moving, or slow, or whether it's up or down and smoothly, or bouncing through the water. And later in the story, just before Clark talks about the poor visibility, he uses the sign BOAT again. But this time he uses this sign. I it's a circular action and it shows the boat continuing on its way and that's an important piece of information, it's not just only pictorial, a pictorial sign, because Clark is using modification that occurs in other signs as well; he's changing the movement in a very special way to show the idea of continuity.

That sort of information isn't so easy to pick up by hearing person. We need to learn that information and gain that precise information from studying the language in the same way as we might learn grammatical endings in, such as in other languages like French or German. Another thing you must notice is that sometimes when Clark is talking about the boat, he doesn't use that same sign BOAT, but uses a single hand, like this (sign) or this (sign). He's replaced one sign BOAT, by another sign. Maybe it reminds you a little bit of the example that Gerry was talking about Clive's joke. In Clark's story we have the boat going up and down in the water; in Clive's story about the motorbike we have the motorcycle going along the road and hitting the bump. Again this way of using a 'Replacement Sign', another sign is something that happens a lot in sign language. It's a little bit like the way we use pronouns like 'it' in English, but in sign language a replacement sign really gives us a little bit more information. Just looking at how Clark talks about the boat we've already learned a lot about sign language, we've already started to clue in to what's important. We're learning that signs sometimes look like what they mean. We're learning that signs can be modified in different ways and individual signs can be replaced by other signs. We'll be looking at each of these points in more detail in other tapes later in the series.

Let's look at the extract again. Are there any other signs that seem obvious? There's one that seems exactly like the action that we ourselves would use in real life. This is when Clark is talking about catching hold of the rails. He's really repeating the action that we ourselves might use, if we were standing on a boat and it was swaying about, we're trying to grab hold of the rails as the boat was swinging from side to side. There are other pictorial signs but not necessarily quite as obvious as that holding on of the rails. What about the sign for 'Sick?'. If we ask a hearing person to create a sign for 'Sick' it might have a bowl and bend over it and try and show the motion of sickness, but the BSL sign gives us the idea of 'Sick', but in rather a more precise and subtle way.

Let's have a look at some other signs that are a little bit like this. Clark uses several signs for 'Nervous.' I wonder what you would do if I asked you to make up a sign for 'Nervous?' Perhaps you'd choose the shaking action because we know that when we're very nervous, that our body actually shakes in fear. So Clark uses a sign that shows shaking, but here it's his legs that are shaking and that's a common sign for 'Nervous' in BSL and you'll see that again in extracts. But Clark also shows a sign for the dog, the dog's legs, which are actually shaking. The dog's legs are actually shaking because Clark actually becomes the dog himself and we get a close-up of the poor dog actually shaking with fear.

Both of these devices are used a lot in sign language, the idea of changing from one person to another person. We might think of that as 'Roleplay' and using close-up images of the signs. Because BSL is a visual language it can use visual ideas and techniques and devices that remind us of making films. We know how film directors use different angles and shots with the camera and see how they can frighten us with the shot of feet walking up stairs, or only walking, just the feet showing in a dark street and we get a fright! And the Deaf person can do exactly the same thing, he can show us a close-up image or a distant. Again we find many examples of this type when we look at more and more extracts from BSL. The signer can also change roles, he can become another person, or in this case it becomes another animal, the dog itself. Sometimes that change from role to another role can be difficult for the hearing person to detect because we have to clue into those slight changes of body shift or eye gaze.

Clark also uses another sign for 'Nervous'. This time it's showing the fast beating of the heart. So it's like a physical action, you know when your heart is beating like that, but if we know the meaning we can probably guess that sign when we see it.

There's one very important area of sign language that we haven't mentioned yet and if we don't clue into this area will miss a fantastic amount of information. This is the way that we can place signs in particular points in space. This positioning, or 'Location' in space, can give us extra information and the signer may have to modify other signs to fit in to where he is placed particular sign. Let's look at an obvious example from Clark's story, look at how he places Seal Island. It's on his left and he can show the seals popping up and down around the island. It shows people looking through binoculars at the seals; his head and body turn towards the Island and focus on the island and all of the signs are directed towards that position. Another example is the way he positioned his wife, Maureen. You can see clearly that she's sitting in front of him and when he says 'his eyes '... are drawn towards her...' you can see how he can change that sign, so that she's actually sitting down below him. Again when he is talking about he carried on signing he directs the sign towards where he's actually placed his wife. If we ignore this information we're missing some absolutely essential points in the language.

Now perhaps it's time to look again at the whole piece and try to see whether we can begin to clue in into the way that sign language is working. Perhaps we can look at ... for some of the points that we've been using in this part of our explanation.