VS: To include or not include?

[Malm Anja]

Dear Donald,

First of all, I would like to wish you all the best in your effort.
Compiling a comprehensive dictionary is a lot of work. I was part of the
Finnish team that produced a Finnish Sign Language - Finnish dictionary,
completed in 1998.

You said that you are aiming to compile a comprehensive dictionary. No
matter how large a dictionary is the editor always has to define someway the
lexicon to be included. If your dictionary is going to be a general
dictionary, you might want to exclude e.g. special field terminologies,
dialectal (regional) signs, or slang signs. Or just include a limited choice
from these special languages.

But otherwise I would say, go ahead. If your aim is to describe the lexicon
of ASL, you would include also the "dirty" signs. I have never heard anybody
criticizing comprehensive spoken language dictionaries for including such
vocabulary. The dictionaries do label them as informal, colloquial, slang,
vulgar, offensive etc., but they are there. 

Besides, parents and teachers do need terminology when discussing sex and
drugs with Deaf youngsters.

Wishing you all the best with your dictionary project,

Anja Malm


Anja Malm
Head of research and lexicography
Finnish Association of the Deaf
P.O. Box 57
00401 Helsinki
Finland
tel. +358 9 580 3460
GSM + 358 40 707 1687
anja.malm at kl-deaf.fi


> ----------
> Lähettäjä:      Grushkin, Donald A.[SMTP:grushkind at CSUS.EDU]
> Vastaa:       For the discussion of linguistics and signed languages.
> Lähetetty:  23. tammikuuta 2003 23:51
> Vastaanottaja:        SLLING-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA
> Aihe:         To include or not include?
> 
> Folks:
> 
> I would like your opinion on something.  I am compiling a bilingual
> ASL-English dictionary, that I am striving to be as comprehensive as
> possible beyond anything we have seen to date.  To this end, I have been
> consulting a number of sources, and one of the sources is Woodward's books
> on Signs of Sexual and Drug behavior.  My wife believes I should not
> include
> these signs, because she feels it is not appropriate to do so, and if
> young
> deaf children should get their hands on this dictionary, they could be
> learning the signs as well.  Plus, I do know that the Deaf community
> generally doesn't like Hearing people looking up the "dirty" signs just to
> know the "dirty" stuff.
> 
> On the other hand, I feel that if English dictionaries such as my copy of
> Webster's has 4-letter words and offensive terminology in it, then why
> shouldn't an ASL dictionary?  Don't people learning sign have the right to
> be able to look up the meaning of something if they should happen to see
> it,
> or Deaf people the means to translate what they know?  Don't Hearing
> children see these 4-letter words in the dictionaries as well?
> 
> One solution to this that I thought of was to have two editions... the
> "abridged", "clean" version, and an unabridged version.
> 
> Another solution is to partially prevent Hearies from looking up the signs
> by not including them in the English-to-ASL part, but only in the
> ASL-to-English part, so if they should SEE it, they can find out it's
> meaning, but they wouldn't easily be finding the sign itself if they
> didn't
> know how to sign it.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Donald A. Grushkin, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor/Coordinator, ASL Program
> Eureka Hall Rm. 312 (Campus Zip # 6079)
> California State University, Sacramento 95819
> (916) 278-6622 Voice; 278-3465 TTY
>