AW: [sw-l] facial expressions - Mundbilder

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
July 9, 2006

Hello Stefan!
Thanks for the wonderful description of your work. Your presentation  
in Maastricht touched people in other countries. I am glad you made  
the choices you made!...and I love reading your transcription of Deaf  
storytelling too...Transcribing from video is not easy, and you  
capture Deaf storytelling beautifully from video...I found one of  
your documents the other that is so great! I have attached it to this  
message...what a great piece of writing!

Of course we have mouthing of words here in the US...in one Deaf  
family in the US you can have one brother who does not mouth words  
and a sister who does...But we are not dependent on the speech  
movements to understand ASL.....there are other non-manuals in ASL  
that we cannot live without...that are necessary for  
understanding...but mouthing specific words in English is not a part  
of true ASL.

Your work with writing speech movements has a different purpose.  
Teaching literacy in a spoken language is a different goal and  
different task...and you have shown the world it is possible using  
SignWriting symbols and your development of writing the movements of  
speech...

But when a Deaf person writes their native ASL, they are not trying  
to understand spoken language, nor can they see themselves sign on a  
videotape...they are writing their native language the way they feel  
it, from their own perspective, and not the way they see it...

So the goals are different....

Spoken language literacy and Sign Language literacy are different but  
they can co-exist and support each other...

I love this attached document, Stefan! The person is washing his  
face, and grooming himself, and combing his hair - wonderful writing  
of mime, gesture and signs!! Thank you for posting it on your web site!


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