[sw-l] Your assistance in a feature on SignWriting

[Stuart Thiessen]

I hope you don't mind an American deaf perspective.  My friend, Philip
and I, who are both deaf, set up a nonprofit organization here in Des
Moines, Iowa. One of our goals is to support and promote the
SignWriting system to other ASL users. Here is my perspective on these
questions ..... See comments below ....

Stuart

On Apr 19, 2005, at 12:18 PM, Cathy H wrote:

> Hello
>
> My name is Cathy Heffernan and I am the editor of SIGNMatters, the
> British Deaf Association's monthly magazine. We are doing a feature on
> SignWriting in the June edition and I'd really appreciate it if some
> of you could take the time to answer some of the below questions. Any
> other comments would be very welcome and if anyone is interested in
> writing something for the feature themselves, just get in touch.
>
> SignWriting - questions
> what it is for

SignWriting is a valuable system for writing the movements of sign
languages. Because it is language neutral, it can be used by any sign
language community to write their sign language. While there are other
writing systems for sign languages such as Stokoe, SignFont, and
HamNoSys, only SignWriting seems to have the popularity and the
effectiveness to become an everyday writing system for sign languages.
Both Stokoe and SignFont are limited by their close connection with
American Sign Language. HamNoSys is strictly a research notation and
does not appear to have any intention of being an everyday writing
system.

> why it was developed

I think Valerie answered that question, but why I am glad she developed
it? Because it gives me and other deaf people the freedom to express
ourselves in writing in our own sign language.  Rather than having to
limit ourselves to expressing ourselves in the national spoken
language, we now have the flexibility to express ourselves in our sign
language and/or in the national spoken language.  We have a choice now
where we did not have it before.

> how it was developed

One thing that impresses me about Valerie is that she incorporated deaf
perspectives into the development of SignWriting.  This is not a
hearing only endeavor.  Rather, it is something that included deaf
perspectives, feedback, and support.  That makes this a collaborative
effort which is part of the strength of SignWriting.

> who uses it and why

I presently live in Des Moines, Iowa. I am teaching SignWriting to
other deaf people in our community. So far, most have been very
positive about being able to read and write in their own language. So
it is exciting.  It is a slow process because there is some cultural
resistance to the idea of deaf people as a minority language community,
but the reality is simple.  Deaf people are a minority language
community in each country and SignWriting is another tool to support
our communities.

> is SignWriting linked to a particular sign language (like BSL, ASL) or
> is it  the same world-over?

Like Valerie said, SignWriting is language neutral.  It is similar to
the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that linguists use to write
the sounds of spoken language.  In the IPA, you have all the symbols
necessary to write any spoken language in the world.  So also
SignWriting gives deaf people a "toolkit" that they can use to write
their sign language using standard rules to write signs.  Then people
from other deaf communities who know SignWriting can also read their
signs (even if they don't know what it means :) ).

> Does SignWriting follow the same grammatical word order and phoenetic
> sequence as whatever sign language it represents?

Since SignWriting simply records the movements of the signer, it will
follow exactly what the signer does.  The degree of detail depends on
the writer and the writing conventions of that particular sign
language.

> Is SignWriting only suitable in certain situations or can it be used
> to, say, write an email?

While there are still technical issues about getting SignWriting to
work with computers, these issues are by no means insurmountable.  I am
very excited about the number of projects that are out there to make
SignWriting more accessible by computer. Computers were first designed
to work with languages that used the Roman alphabet.  Then computers
had to adapt to languages that used extra diacriticals with the Roman
alphabet.  Then we had to deal with other alphabets like Cyrillic,
Hebrew, Arabic, and many more.  Then we had to deal with writing
systems like Chinese, and some of the other Indic writing systems where
symbols change depending on context. Each of these "challenges" were
overcome.  Now it is SignWriting's turn.

Regardless of the computer issues, Signwriting is always available with
the trusty pen and paper ... no batteries, internet connection, or
monitor required. :)


I hope this user perspective helps.