Request for Research Data

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
April 15, 2006

Stuart Thiessen wrote:
> I am looking for the user's point of view. Obviously, this will differ
> from individual to individual based on their experience both with the
> sign language itself and SW.

Smile..it is amazing how hard it is to define terms...the term "user"  
could mean so many things to me...

I am assuming you mean a writer, and a writer who knows signing  
fairly well. There are some users that only read. And they really  
read SignWriting well. But they don't write. There are some children  
like that. It is totally astounding how well they read SignWriting  
literature and produce the signs they are reading well, but they do  
not write themselves...

Others start writing quite quickly...I have seen that as well when  
people would receive our SignWriter Newspaper in the mail back in the  
1980's...they had never seen SignWriting before in their lives, and  
this one Deaf woman in New York, wrote me a five page letter  
handwritten in SignWriting basing it on what she saw in the newspaper  
we sent her...and she really wasn't sure what she was writing except  
that she could read the signs she saw and then copied them while she  
was writing..that was a strange and wonderful experience to receive  
that letter out of the blue in the mail...

I digressed...I am sorry...I will read the rest of your message  
shortly...I think this is an interesting and thought provoking  
project, Stuart!!

Val ;-)