[sw-l] how to write dialogues between 2 or more people?

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
May 31, 2005

Barbara in Italy wrote:
> I'm not sure about ASL, but I know that in LIS eyegaze doesn't  
> apply just to
> "placing the listener", it has also a very important role WITHIN  
> signed
> sentences (as in "warning, I'm opening/closing one sentence" or in  
> "warning,
> this's gonna be real important"). So, I'm wondering whether the use  
> of eyegaze
> for both listener's placing and within the normal LIS flow will  
> cause a bit of
> confusion in readers or not.

Hello Barbara -
This is an interesting point...I believe that all signed languages  
use eyegaze in different ways, so it could be argued that the two  
different uses of eyegaze could be confusing, but SignWriting is just  
writing body movement, and it is not changing how things are signed,  
so the signers themselves have to deal with these issues, because  
they are using eyegaze in different ways, when they sign a dialogue,  
and other people seem to understand them, so I think we should just  
write what we see...

Do you have a videotape of a dialogue in Italian Sign Language, that  
you would like to write in SignWriting? The best way to test this, is  
to write a document to see what happens...Viewing the videotape  
together will help...

In DanceWriting, which was the forerunner to SignWriting and is inter- 
connected, we write group dances where one dancer is relating to  
other dancers on a stage, and we write the Stage Patterns, or Room  
Location with a square box at the bottom of each page... These Room  
Location symbols are in the IMWA in SignMaker...later I will try to  
construct a few for you to give you an idea, but here is an example  
of group dances...different dancers are on different lines...and  
their relationships are in the square at the bottom of the page...The  
three dancers are Stage-Left, and are in a row with each other....







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