SV: [SLLING-L] Re: Acronyms for SL

[Sonja Erlenkamp]

The memorability of an acronym is IMHO (-> nice initialsm/acronym ;) based on convention and frequency of use. I doubt that most people would recognize NSL or (NTS for that matter ) as an abbreviation for Norwegian Sign Language since this is one of the signed languages that has been talked/written little about on this list (and other international meeting points). It is a totally different matter with ASL and BSL though. 
 
With regard to the "this is an English list"- argument, I wonder if this is actually a valid argument. In Norway we refer to ASL actually very often as ASL and not ATS (which would be the Norwegian abbreviation), at least not any more (older books sometimes used ATS, but our students consider it weird).When we use abbreviations to refer to signed languages as much as we do, they become entrenched as a name tags for the language.
 
Furthermore, I think we all agree that English is a dominant (if not the most dominant) language in internasjonal relations and it takes over domains in other spoken language communities. In Norway this has become a huge issue, this is probably true for other spoken language communities too. 
 
 With regard to the issue at hand  the question is if the signed language communities tolerate these "name tags" to based on English abbreviations and what kind of role we researchers want to play in this. 
 
Sonja
 
 

________________________________

Fra: slling-l-bounces at majordomo.valenciacc.edu på vegne av Mark A. Mandel
Sendt: ti 04.09.2007 16:27
Til: slling-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
Emne: [SLLING-L] Re: Research on Signed/Spoken Language Code switching



"Lorraine Leeson" <leesonl at gmail.com>  wrote:

>But why do the acronyms need to be transparent?? This doesn't seem to
>be a necessary condition of naming!

As someone else has said, codes are codes and don't need to be memorable.
But there's a reason that, say, my university ID has a name form (mamandel)
as well as a number. If you're reading a comparative paper on, say, namesign
forms in SLs around the world, do you want to have to keep a cheat sheet
handy to know which one each code refers to? I don't.

And as for the other complaint, that these terms are English-based: We are
writing here in English. If I read a Russian paper on spoken languages, I
would have no right to complain that (transliterated) "nemeckii" doesn't
resemble the English word "Hungarian" -- or, for that matter, the Hungarian
word "Magyar" (acute accent on the 2nd "a"). Codes are not language-based,
but names and abbreviations are. It would not be unfair for English-language
abbreviations (NOT codes!) for SLs to be English-based.

But it would be polite for writers to introduce the abbreviations on first
use in a paper, as is typically done in biomedical text with abbreviations
for genes, proteins, diseases, and so on.

m a m
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