Words in Hand

Did you see how Gerry set the scene showing the two teams opposite each other with supporters all the way around? Outside the ground his mother and father – Bruno's mother and father – were walking arm in arm to the match. He didn't need to use separate signs to show that they were outside of the ground because he simply put the existence sign in the right place which gives us that information, like this.

If you look at the next part of the story, notice that you can see the extent of the ways signs can use the possibilities in space.

We know a person is running down the pitch by this sign, and we know they are a winger because of the position he's put in by Gerry. And he can show the speed of the winger's running – with puffed cheeks. And then the ball is passed from the left. So he's using both hands to show action on both parts of the pitch.

He uses an identifier to show the path of the ball in the air, like this. And then Gerry himself becomes the winger to show the ball bouncing off the player. It is a simple fact that signing accepts different roles: becoming a winger, or a goalkeeper, or a referee. This means we can get a frequent change of perspectives because of that change. For example, the winger has the ball flying toward them and bouncing of his body. The ball isn't a 'pin' in the air anymore – it becomes a round object that hits him on the shoulder. Gerry uses this classifier handshape for a round object. Gerry is giving us a close up of the winger collecting the ball and in the same way he gives us a close up of the winger kicking the ball. And then we see the ball fly into the goal.

This left hand becomes the goalpost and this right hand shows the ball going into the goal, in the lower right hand corner (from the perspective of the kicker). Yes, it is possible to be as precise as that just by looking at how the sign I put on one hand relates to the other hand, like this.

Did you notice also how at the same time both hands are bouncing to show the force of the goal? Gerry keeps the left hand as the goalpost and then uses his right hand to show the net bulging with the strength of the shot, like this. Again, we know it's the net, and the net bulging, because of the relationship of one hand to the other.

After that you see all the other players rush in to congratulate the scorer. It shows the position and the direction the players were running in, like this.

When Gerry shows the next goal, again he uses the left hand to show the goalpost and the right hand is the ball. This time he changes the position to show it's a goal for the other team. So instead of the goal being there, it's brought here – and score!

In fact, if you look at the whole extract again you will see that the goalpost is not fixed in one spot all the way through the film. It depends on the perspective the signer wants to give.

It may be helpful to think of a film made by a director or an illustrator, where the director can change the camera angle: they might even do a close up or a view from the right or the left. The information may be the same – a winger scores – but we can get different pictures of that same part of the information.

The similarities between the filmmaker or the illustrator (and the flexibility that they have) and the way that sign language can give visual information is seen in the way Gerry can give an accurate sign language version of a picture in the book: Bruno in the shed. We see almost the exact same information of Bruno with his hands on his head, looking out of the window, like this.

You might like to look at this section again so see how cleverly Gerry uses those different perspectives.