<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><font face="Arial" class="">SignWriting List</font><div class=""><font face="Arial" class="">February 24, 2015</font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class="">QUESTIONS ABOUT RECEPTIVE AND EXPRESSIVE WRITING</font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class=""><font color="#00CC33" size="3" class="">by<br class=""><a href="http://www.signwriting.org/symposium/presentation0028.html#author" title="Author" target="_self" class="">Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway</a></font></span><br style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class=""><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: -webkit-center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">Professor of Anthropology</span><br style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class=""><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: -webkit-center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">Oberlin College</span><br style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class=""><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: -webkit-center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">King Building 305</span><br style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class=""><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: -webkit-center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">10 North Professor Street</span><br style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class=""><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: -webkit-center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">Oberlin, OH 44074-1019</span><br style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class=""><a href="mailto:erhoffma@oberlin.edu" title="Contact" target="_self" style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class="">erhoffma@oberlin.edu</a></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class="">ANSWERED IN ASL (with English captions)</font></div><div class=""><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class=""><font color="#00CC33" size="3" face="Arial" class="">by</font></span></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class=""><font color="#00CC33" size="3" class=""><a href="http://www.signwriting.org/symposium/presentation0003.html#author" title="Author" target="_self" class="">Adam Frost</a></font></span><br style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class=""><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: -webkit-center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">ASL & Sign Language Linguistics Professor,</span></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: -webkit-center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">San Diego Mesa College & ASL Teacher at</span><br style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class=""><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: -webkit-center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">University of California San Diego (UCSD),</span><br style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class=""><a href="mailto:frost@signwriting.org" title="Contact" target="_self" style="text-align: -webkit-center;" class="">frost@signwriting.org</a></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class="">ASL Answers on Video:</font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class="">Expressive and Receptive from the Deaf Perspective</font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><a href="http://youtu.be/xRpL1sro6UU" class="">http://youtu.be/xRpL1sro6UU</a></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: Arial;" class="">Below are the Questions and Answers from the transcript:</span></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: Arial;" class="">———————————————————————</span></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class="">ERIKA’S QUESTION 1:</font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class="">Here’s a quote from the conference panel I was planning
to present on about this topic:</font></div><div class=""><p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" class=""> “Anthropology,
like other sciences, has been accused of perpetuating a “colonial attitude” in
deaf research (Ladd 2005; De Clerck 2010) whereby “research subjects are
reduced to objects, and indigenous knowledge of the informants is granted
secondary status in the production of scientific knowledge” (De Clerck
2010:436).</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" class=""> I understand that the original shift from receptive to
expressive writing had to do at least in part with Deaf users’ political
resistance to being treated as objects of study.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" class=""> (How) do you feel that adopting an expressive writing
perspective has succeeded in making Deaf writers more clearly marked as
subjects, rather than research objects?</font></p><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class="">ADAM’S ANSWER 1 (transcript of captions): In your first question, you asked me if the change from receptive to expressive writing had an impact for Deaf Writers being viewed as the subjects rather than objects in research. I don't think so. Whether the writing is receptive or expressive, I don't think there is any true impact. The reason is that often writers will aim for a standard of writing that can be uniformly understood by everyone. So even if the viewpoint being used is expressive, I would still be writing what would be mutually understood.</font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: Arial;" class="">---------------------------------------------</span></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class="">ERIKA’S QUESTION 2:</font></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: Arial;" class="">In the instructional materials and in other
discussions I’ve seen of the shift to expressive writing, I’ve heard it
described as “seeing through your own face” or “signing from your own
perspective”.</span></div><div class=""><p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" class=""> That usefully
characterizes what it’s like to write expressively. However, I’ve rarely heard
people discuss the impact this has on reading “through someone else’s face” or
“from someone else’s (spatial) perspective”.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" class=""> How do you feel
this affects the ways in which you read other SignWriters’ texts? What skills
are involved in reversing the perspective to imagine that you are being
addressed and/or in imagining yourself in the (literal and possibly figurative)
place of the writer?</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" class=""> Does this
possibly encourage readers to adopt the perspective of the writer in ways other
types of writing systems might not?</font></p><p class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt;" class=""><font face="Arial" class="">Rather than see
expressive writing as allowing readers to take on someone else’s perspective John
Lee Clark, a deaf/blind blogger, frames expressive writing as making it more
possible to make the text “your own”. He
posted these comments about the future of ASL literature on his blog:<o:p class=""></o:p></font></span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt;" class=""><font face="Arial" class="">“Someone else’s voice. Someone else’s hands.
It’s not that we cannot enjoy ASL performances. Readings, videos, and theater
are still important. But there’s something about the abstract, bare symbols on
the page that invites our minds to engage, argue with, and absorb the language
before us. We cannot do these things as well when we are only spectators. <o:p class=""></o:p></font></span></p><p class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt;" class="">One of the most important things the new
developers did with written ASL was to make it a rule that writers are to
project themselves spatially onto the page. If the writer is right-handed and
says “Hello,” his hand, from his own point of view, moves right. He is to write
“Hello” in that way. He is </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;" class="">not</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;" class=""> to write as if it’s someone else saying “Hello” to him.
Written ASL does not create a movie screen or a line of mannequins. Instead, it
creates space for us to say things as ourselves. And it creates space, when we
are reading it, to fall into the text. In that space, we are there.”<o:p class=""></o:p></span></font></p><p class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt;" class=""><font face="Arial" class="">How do these
comments resonate with your experiences as a skilled SignWriter and reader? Are
these mutually exclusive ways of understanding the effects of expressive
writing, or just different ways of experiencing it?<o:p class=""></o:p></font></span></p>
<!--EndFragment--></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class="">ADAM’S ANSWER 2 (transcript of captions): On to your second question. When comparing receptive verses expressive writing, is there any impact on how you read other writer's writing? Okay, let me start by saying this. I am not really skilled with receptive writing in general. I have only learned to use expressive writing, so receptive writing is difficult for me because I am used to writing directly from my thoughts; I don't watch someone signing when I write. If one were to record what someone was signing in front of them, receptive writing would be easier. If I were to use receptive writing directly from my thoughts, I would have to do a mental view shift. where I would have to imagine watching myself signing Now when reading something written receptively, if I am given another person's writing for example, I would have to do a mental view shift because I am used to expressive writing when reading. It is possible for me, however, to imagine that someone is standing in front of me signing. Once I have done that, I can read the document well. Whereas writing expressively, it feels natural to me because I can write directly from my thoughts. That is just my feelings, my experience, my -uhh- When I see myself signing, the writing matches that. That is why writing expressively is easier for me. Now when I am reading another person's expressive writing, I will mentally take on the persona of the person signing. There may be a few times that I might notice a sign as their specific signing, but that doesn't really happen that often. Because there is standard way of writing that is emerging. Just like when reading English, you don't notice that you are really not "hearing" the words in your head of the writer speaking. You are "hearing" your own voice as if it were the writer's. So, I think it is actually very similar regardless of language. Now if I were to write in English phonetically, the experience of reading would be more of a realization of how the writer speaks. An example would be "Catcher in the Rye" which does write phonetically. You also asked me about a Deaf-Blind blogger, John Lee Clark. He gave his thoughts on reading and writing sign language. I feel that he's explanation is right on the money to what my experiences are. You continued by asking me if reading and writing can both be used to understand the expressive writing experience, or if they are different experiences with different viewpoints. I think they are just different experiences. Because if I had never written before, there wouldn't really be much difference on how I read. The same is true for the reverse. If I only write, there wouldn't be much impact on how I read because I wouldn't have experience it yet.</font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><div class=""><font face="Arial" class="">---------------------------------------------</font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><font face="Arial" class="">ERIKA’S QUESTION 3:</font></div></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;" class="">When I asked
questions about receptive/expressive to the listserv a while back, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;" class="">André Lemyre imagined some possible futures involving
playing with writing from different perspectives:</span></div><div class=""><p class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt;" class=""><font face="Arial" class="">“I
would read a book with intense emotions written expressively by the narrator to
make me feel in the shoes of the character. Then comes the mean
character, whom threatens my character that I read receptively.
There would be a tendency to make mean character left handed (even with a scar
on a hand). Until the identity of the mean character is known, no sign
would display a face...<br class="">
<br class="">
Other narrators may write in the receptive perspective to keep a distance
from the reader, example an official report.<br class="">
<br class="">
The view from above could be selected for a character like Spiderman...<br class="">
<br class="">
Poetry would swap between left-right, expressive-receptive, even top view to
exploit shapes of the signs. The arab calligraphy use geometry
sometimes...”<o:p class=""></o:p></font></span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt;" class=""><font face="Arial" class="">As the range of genres written with SignWriting expands, what
do you think about the possibility of adopting multiple visual perspectives in
writing? </font></span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt;" class=""><font face="Arial" class=""><br class=""></font></span></p><p class=""><font face="Arial" class="">ADAM’S ANSWER 3 (transcript of captions): In your third question, you asked me if writing in SignWriting enters more genres, is there a possibility that there will be documents with multiple viewpoints. It is possible that may happen. I don't think it is likely, however. The norm of writing will be expressive writing. In a few cases, it might be possible that multiple viewpoints might be used. Most likely we would see that happen within the fiction genre, just like the story "Catcher in the Rye". There was the standard written form, as well as a phonetic form of writing. So I think that it is possible to have in fictional stories where it is used as an intentional literary device. I hope this answers your questions.</font></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p>
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