ling anth research about SSW

Fri Oct 16 00:20:16 UTC 2009

SignWriting List
October 15, 2009

Hello Erika and everyone -
Great to hear from you again, Erika!  See my answers below, in-between  
your writing...

On Oct 14, 2009, at 9:40 AM, Erika Hoffmann wrote:
> Hi Val and everyone else. I've been on these boards for a while, but
> have only piped up on occasion.

Well it is great that you decided to write!

> I'm a linguistic anthropologist who
> works on Nepali Sign Language and I've used SSW to create transcripts
> for the analysis of the video data I've collected. It has been a
> wonderful tool and, as I've used it more and followed your discussions
> on this board I have decided to not only use SSW for my research, but
> also to write about it more directly.

Wonderful!

> I'll be giving a paper at the American Anthropological Association
> this December about SSW. I've pasted the abstract for that paper
> (which I am still writing) below.

Thank you for pasting that below, inside this email message...(it is  
not an attachment, but a pasted paragraph below...)

> I'd like to continue to develop this
> line of inquiry in the future. If I can get funding (and I think I
> can) I would love to visit some centers for sign writing to extend the
> ethnographic aspect of this project beyond the discussion boards. Val,
> would it be possible to talk about my visiting you sometime in the
> next year or so?

Yes of course! I think that would be a splendid idea! You are very  
welcome to come visit me in La Jolla, California, where I live. To  
explain, I work out of my home. So it is not exactly like a bustling  
office with many working at a row of desks...It is only little old me  
at my computer with occasional and welcome visits by Adam Frost from  
Northridge area, north of Los Angeles (a three hour trip south for  
him) and from Lucinda O'Grady Batch and Nancy Romero, who live 20  
minutes away...other than that I work alone here, reaching the world  
through the internet, so I am hardly alone really...We can always meet  
for free on Skype and also ooVoo if I get set up too...

But I have been thinking recently that maybe more courses on  
SignWriting online and also here in my hometown of La Jolla might be  
useful...they would cost money to attend...the fees would cover the  
costs of paying the teachers and providing the web sites and  
materials, and if people travel here to La Jolla of course there are  
the costs of travel and hotel, but if I offered SignWriting seminars,  
perhaps once a year in June-July, which seems to be two months that  
most people have off from work in the northern hemispere anyway...that  
in time the SignWriting Serminar might grow...

So I am digressing...you tell me when you want to come to visit,  
Erika, and you are always welcome...

> I'm in Ohio, so I will also hope to visit the Church
> in Michigan that uses SSW. Would anyone else be willing to possibly
> allow me to visit them and participate in and observe your use of SSW
> in your particular social context? I just want to see how receptive
> list members might be to such a project.

Have you considered visiting Germany at the Osnabruck School for the  
Deaf? smile...

Or French-Canada? at the school that uses SignWriting there?

If you are interested I can give you the contact information...there  
is also the New Jersey School for the Deaf and the Georgia School for  
the Deaf, but in both instances, I know one teacher who uses  
SignWriting personally in each school, but I do not know if the deaf  
children are learning it there or not...

> Thanks!

You are welcome!

> AAA paper:

> This paper explores the relationship between language ideology and
> script by detailing emerging practices for writing sign languages.
> Sign languages have traditionally been considered un-writable, a state
> of affairs not due to the formal properties of sign languages but to
> the ideologies about the nature of both language and writing that have
> informed the development of most sign languages scripts. However,
> signers worldwide are increasingly producing written sign language
> texts using Sutton SignWriting (SSW), a script originally developed
> for dance notation. Because this script emerged outside the rubric of
> formal linguistics, its development circumvented disciplinary
> ideologies in productive ways. Drawing on examples of texts produced
> by SSW users, and the metalinguistic discussion of these texts on
> online discussion boards, I detail the ways in which use of this
> script makes visible properties of both spoken and signed language
> that had been ideologically erased from linguistic analysis by the use
> of scripts developed according to a spoken rather than visual language
> model. This allows SSW users to explicitly articulate and challenge
> dominant, and often backgrounded, ideologies about the nature of
> language and writing in ways that are fruitful for public and
> scholarly understandings of spoken, as well as signed, languages.

Beautifully written and explained, Erika. Thank you!

And please keep us informed of this paper's publication. I will be  
happy to post it, with permission, on our web site, in the SignWriting  
Archive. And what about your actual Nepali Sign Language writing? Do  
you have any samples? I notice we do not have a Nepali SignPuddle and  
I am really surprised...how did you write your documents?

Thanks again for sharing...

Val ;-)

Valerie Sutton
Sutton at SignWriting.org

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