What's the deal with SignWriting?

[Joseph Pietro Riolo]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 9:51 PM, Andrew Pidkameny <pidkameny at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> However, when I asked around about it in the ASL department at
> Northeastern University (where I am a student) I mostly got a lot of
> frowning and scoffing. The general opinion around here seems to be
> that SignWriting is not a useful tool for research because it is not
> precise enough in its descriptive powers. And as far as it is
> sufficiently descriptive, it is too rich to be useful, or too easy to
> misinterpret.

Others already discussed on how useful SignWriting can
be for linguistic research.  But, I want to mention that the
Deaf culture continues to have great resistance against
the writing system for ASL.  That resistance may have
influenced or shaped the mindset of the people that you
asked around.  Some or few people proclaim that video
is infinitely better than writing system.  Few people stress
that we don't have to follow the hearing world by developing
a writing system.  I call this attitude "agraphism".

It is not my place to make harsh judgment on them but
it is important to know that the resistance continues to
exist and that it continues to have very large influence
on the mindset of the members of Deaf culture.

In case you don't know, there exist two other writing
system that I am aware of so far.  They are developed
by Dr. Sam Supalla and R. W. Arnold (full name unknown,
http://www.aslian.com/ ).

Very interesting discussion nevertheless.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
josephpietrojeungriolo at gmail.com

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this
post in the public domain.
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