[sw-l] undoing the devisualation

[Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa]

Trevor,

I argued with one NISL tutor here a few weeks ago - I said that it is
IMPORTANT to teach them HOW to:

1. point - always point - point - always point

2. facial expressions (u ll find me talking to the wall - my students hate
it when I do that - they ll know they forget to use their facial expression)
- it's often the matter of undoing the devisualation :-(

3. over-exaggerate their gestures - fluent NISL (or BSL) users do that a lot

4. basic grammar of NISL

I often get them to do a lot of facial expressions game - my mate said to me
"Are you teaching them how to pull faces?"

:o

And I said that I have to teach them phrases (Multi-Channel Signs) - for
instance last week I taught them how we refer to dead people (who passed
away) in NISL - for someone who is new to NISL, it's a horrible sign at
first - in BSL you'll say "kill him!" in a repetitive way - mouthing
"deeeeee" - I tried to find the same term in English: "for instance, we can
talk about the late Mrs Jones" - they can't get hang of it.

For instance if I talk about a deaf guy called Paul who passed away a few
months ago - "Oh, it's strange that Paul isnt here anymore!" my mate ll go
"Paul? Oh, Paul deeeeee?" and I'll go nodding my head saying "yes, deeee,
deeee" to confirm the Visual mind - as you know we need to build a visual
map in our brain in order to follow the story.

As for your lecturer, Trevor, why am I not surprised? He was prolly acting
to the will of the clients he work with - this is London - the majority of
Deaf people in London says they have their own dialect - the London dialect
- which I ususally refer to as the "London Mouthing Dialect" - I get very
tired lipreading everyone - and they cant follow me for 2 reasons: me
flying-shit signing speed AND my tendency NOT to mouth everything.

And London is the only place where you get SSE interpreted plays advertised
as "SSE interpreted events"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:-o

Shane




> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu [mailto:owner-sw-
> l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu] On Behalf Of Trevor Jenkins
> Sent: 25 February 2005 20:39
> To: SignWriting List
> Subject: Re: [sw-l] mouthing in the EU
>
> On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, Shane Gilchrist Ó hEorpa
> <shane.gilchrist.oheorpa at fran...:
>
> > I just told someone off for mouthing in English when he can do better in
> BSL
> > mouthing.
> >
> > Mouthing in English is discouraged in Belfast & Derry yet it's
> encouraged in
> > Dublin to some extent (!)
>
> I wish you'd been teaching me today Shane; we had a session on the use and
> appropriateness of SSE v BSL. Had to prepare the same story in BSL and in
> SSE. Interpreter leading the session thinks that SSE is acceptable.
> Personally, even though I'm hearing ;-) , I don't find it so. Rather like
> transliterations of the Bible that pretend to be translations; but are
> nothing more than English glosses replacing Hebrew or Greek words. It ends
> up being unnatural and wooden. SSE is nothing more than occasional signed
> glosses accompanying spoken English. At best that's a creole but it ain't
> BSL.
>
> There are some well-defined moments in a BSL discourse when mouthings are
> acceptable but sadly students seem to have to wait until BSL NVQ Level 3
> courses to discover when those occur. And even then mostly by reading
> Sutton-Spence & Woll's Linguistics of BSL book.
>
> Regards, Trevor
>
> <>< Re: deemed!
>
>