Words in Hand

Well, you've probably already guessed why we did this experiment. A lot people think sign language is just the hands signing. That everything is concentrated on the hands. As we have said again and again, that is not true.

So what we want to begin to look at is what information we are getting from the face and body. In fact, in particular we will concentrate today on the face. If we look at the first part, with the explanation from Gerry before his face is covered up, we can see his face was giving us different kinds of information. You might have noticed when he was talking about the boat going through the water, he was using a stretched mouth to show the intensity and the strength of the movement. The difficulty of the boat to go through the water.

And then we saw Gerry turning away as a big wave was coming towards him. You saw him sign this. So the movement of the head and eyes in the direction of the wave gave us information that is crucial to understand what is going on in the signing.

And then we saw his head bouncing, like this. His cheeks puffed out, adding emphasis to show how terrible the wave and its strength was.

You might have noticed as well another example of puffed cheeks when Gerry shows the boat going down and up in the waves and water covers the boat. Do you remember watching this?

So you have got some idea of what I've said about the kind of information we lose if we can't see the face, when it's covered up. So now I want you to watch the middle bit again, and this time we want to look carefully at the face (now that we can see it as we have taken away the circle). Watch it carefully and see what information you are getting.