"Accent"

[Shelley M. Dufoe]

Des Powers wrote:
> Australians who have studied at Gallaudet and have become fluent
> (near-native in several cases) in ASL have told me that ASL-users
> have said they use ASL with an "Australian Accent" - but Ive never
> been able to quite pin down whether its lexical, "movementish",
> word order or what. Any thoughts anyone? As Adam would know,
> we dont refer to the (slight) differences from state to state in Auslan
> as "accents", but as "dialects". (Im not sure that theyre really dialects
> either (??) (said to be derived, at least in part from northern and 
>southern varieties of BSL.) "Accent" to me is to do with voice quality
> and some suprasegmental aspects of speech, not lexicon or
> syntax - not sure what the equivalents would be in SLs?
> 
> Des

Tessa wrote:
> However, I think there are differences in accent, but no-one has
> bothered to really examine them.  As Bencie says, middle aged
> women seem to articulate differently, and I think from my
> observations there are clear generational differences in the way
> people sign.  These I notice as being in handshapes and
> movements particularly, and also facial expressions <snip>

This is too interesting to continue lurking, so I'll toss in my two 
pesos worth, too.  I am a hearing American linguist who has lived
in Mexico and studied Mexican Sign Language (LSM) for nearly six
years.  Even though by now I have forgotten most of the ASL 
(contact signing, actually) that I knew, I am becoming increasingly
aware of my continuing "American accent" in my  LSM.  When I 
first arrived, I believe that my "accent" especially influenced 
handshapes and facial expressions, but it may also have 
influenced things such as sign space and tenseness/laxness.
(Like Des, I believe that differences in the lexicon and sytax don't
fall into the category "accent."  I would consider them to be 
(sub)dialectical differences or, in the case of a language learner,
errors caused by a lack of fluency in the language.)  

Even though I now sign quite fluent LSM, I still catch myself using
ASL handshapes instead of very similar LSM handshapes (e.g. 
ASL d-hand instead of LSM baby-d, ASL a-hand instead of the 
tighter, tucked LSM a-hand [similar to ASL, but the fingertips are 
tucked into the palm], and occasionally even the ASL h-hand
instead of the LSM h-hand [like ASL but the thumb points up]).
To be honest, I didn't even notice the d/baby-d and the a-hand 
distinction for a few years -- in my mind these ASL and LSM 
handshapes were "the same."  When my Deaf Mexican friends
learn or copy ASL signs they unconsciously tend to substitute
the baby-d and the LSM a-hand for ASL d-hand and a-hand.
Also, when I have recently shared my findings about my
"American Sign accent" with a few Deaf Mexican friends, they
were surprised and not conscious of how I was articulating
these handshapes.  Thus, they don't appear to distinguish
between these phonetically very similar handshapes either
(although they likely sense something "foreign" about my 
signing).

This phenomena of minute but consistent formational 
differences between signers of different countries which are
perceived as equivalent was noted by Klima & Bellugi in _The
Signs of Language_ (p. 151 & footnote 4 and pp. 160-163
"A Fist is Not a Fist:  Imitations of Foreign Signs.")  [Others
may have written on the subject, too, but this is the one that
pops to mind.]

Shelley Dufoe
Shelley_Dufoe at CompuServe.com