Words in Hand

Well do you see what I mean? About the amount of information Clark is giving us about the size and shape, and how you hold things? Let's work through the story picking out the examples, but before we do, be careful about one or two things. Perhaps you've got the idea from what I've said already that the sign in BSL, or the handshape we use, is exactly the same as what we would use in real life. That's not absolutely true. The handshape, or the sign, is slightly changed, it's different from the real life situation. Let's take an obvious example.

Watch how Clark is talking about walking in 'Bear Hunt'. He uses different signs and different ways of modifying those signs. One of the signs he uses is this (signs). Now if you look at that hand shape, people don't walk with both legs at the same time, they can't do that and the feet are bent, or the legs are actually bent, that's not real life. But we can see the link between this sign and the actual walking movement.

Let's look at some other examples. At the beginning of the tape we get information about the bear. And he draws in the air the shape of the ears and he uses this handshape, the 'Pointing' handshape to draw the ears themselves. That happens a lot in sign language, we use that finger to draw the actual shape, it might be a circle, so can you remember the hole in the story? So it's drawn actually in space. Now how do we know that Bear had a pencil? Clark gave us that information in a number of different ways. He fingerspelled 'Pencil' and he gave a sign for pencil, which showed how we are actually holding the pencil, there's the pencil and that's how you hold it. But as well as that, he used another Classifying hand shape to show the shape of the pencil, and he showed us that it was long and thin. (And) he gave us the information about the pencil in a number of different ways.

What about the Hunters? Well, what we know is that they had particular and special hats with flat rims and they were carrying guns. So often, when he was talking about the Hunter and the men with the hats, he showed the men with that and he showed the guns. And again we know that we're talking about a gun (a gun) because we're actually holding the gun, but especially a gun not a pistol, a gun.

So through the tape you can see a whole range of signs that are linked with 'Walking', 'Jumping', 'Getting out of the car' and so on, and all of them use that hand shape, that Classifier handshape of the two legs.

Can you remember how Clark talked about the hunters having a net? First of all he showed us how the hunter held the net, and then he showed what the actual net, the part of the net, looked like, by showing the strings of the net when he was talking. When he was talking about the string and the stakes of wood, notice once again I've used that hand shape for the stakes and another hand shape for showing the thinness, the fine string and the wood. And at the same time he could show us how he knocked the stakes into the ground with a hammer.

When he was talking about the rope he showed us the thickness of the rope and how we handled it and was getting ready to throw it and then threw it. I imagine a lot of you didn't know a sign for R-H-I-N-O but what did you think of Clarke's sign? It's very clear that it gives us a lot of information. He's using the 'C' hand(shape) to show the curve of the horn and is using his whole arms, not just his hands, but his whole arm, to show the legs and the hooves. If he's shown feet or legs, just the 'V' hand there, it would have shown that it was a very thin thing, but he was trying to show you that it was a large animal.

Another interesting example is the way the Clark talks about the cage. You remember he said that there was a cage and the way that the bear managed to escape from the cage. The sign for SAW can be made and can be shown in different ways. First of all, how we hold the saw and then holding the wood with the left hand and you saw. But after that Clark shows us what the bear actually did. He had to saw through the rail. He couldn't say 'Saw' (signs) and the rail fell down, he had to show the rail and the way it was held and then the soaring action through the rail itself, and the pulling action, jumping out of the hole in the rails and then the bear was free.

The other thing that we can notice is that we can get information from Clark about BSL signs like DRAW. But then, when he shows us the bear actually drawing he can't draw there, so he takes the pencil and draws in space. That's much more flexible, he can do a lot more things with that and show the outline. So perhaps you'd like to look and see the story again for yourself and see how Clark is giving the information again and again in different ways. How we make use of the size and the shape of those objects (he) makes the story more interesting and more visual.

Now we're going to have a change of pace. Because you've seen Clark signing in a slow and gentle way, we're going to show you Clark signing with a group of other deaf people at his normal speed, and when you see it I think you'll see that it's different. This time deaf people are discussing it's called the 'Sympathetic Hearing Scheme' You remember at the beginning of this tape Gerry showed you a little card and it has a logo on it which shows an ear with the line through it. Well, we would like you to look at this discussion on the tape and see if you can notice how the deaf people talk about that card and the scheme itself, What was their name for it and how do they refer to it? And we hope that you manage to recover from the very fast signing that you're seeing and we'll talk more about the classifiers in the next tape.