Words in Hand

Well, I hope you enjoyed seeing some new faces and beginning to get some idea of how non manual features work.

One of the things that we find when we look at the video tape closely is that sometimes we feel that one particular person doesn't use their facial expression very much. But then when we look again, we see it's simply because the way of using it is slightly different – as the movements are not as big – because you can recognise the same movement when we have looked at the tape again and again and again.

One of the things we try to do is try to match the type of non manual feature and facial expression with the meaning it has in language, if we add it to a particular sign. Now, actually, it's a little bit more difficult than we first thought.

Take the example of this. We know that usually when you add that to a sign, it usually means something unpleasant, an unpleasant connection.

So if I signed 'work' and then added this, that means I find work unpleasant – that work is not nice.

Another meaning you we can get sometimes is 'really easy', like this. 'Work is easy.' So if I say something like 'I'm signing' with this, it means I am having a simple communication and it's easy.*

So what we begin to see is that we have to take the original meaning of the sign and then add the idea of an unpleasant connotation to the sign so we get what the meaning is in the end.

I think now we shall have another look at a little bit more of Maureen's story. I'd like to make a few points about the kind of body movements you will see. Because one thing you might have noticed in the first part is that often Maureen uses what we call 'role play'. When we had a situation of a cat and an old woman, we knew who was talking to who from the non manual information. This shows the cat. The cat looks up and the woman is looking down and talking. So you can see the different eyelines.

So we need to look and catch those clues when we are trying to understand the story.

Another thing we can see clearly is some of what we might call 'natural gesture', in a way that you might gesture yourself. So when the old woman is sitting – sorry that's wrong – when the old man is sitting and thinking, you can see him do this. We might do that ourselves.