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From:
Valerie Sutton Date: Wed Jun 10, 1998 10:07 am Subject: Expressive World Standard | |
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Hello Marie! Thank you for your question about Expressive vs. Receptive. The answer is: Expressive Is The World Standard SignWriting is published expressively all over the world now. So please use Expressive whenever you publish, or distribute documents to others. You can read about this on our web site at: Lessons In SignWriting Lesson One: Viewpoints https://www.SignWriting.org/sw132.html For those of you who are curious about the details behind this issue...here is a technical explanation: RECEPTIVE VS. EXPRESSIVE Receptive means that you write what you see another person sign. You are standing in front of someone signing and writing what you "see". Expressive means thinking in a signed language and writing your own thoughts, writing everything from your own perspective, seeing your own hands, and feeling your own face...you are writing what you "feel". Most photographs are "receptive" because people face you in the picture. Videos are also receptive - the people face you and sign to you on video. From 1974 until around 1984, we wrote SignWriting receptively. In 1984, Lucinda Batch, and other skilled native signers, who were also skilled in SignWriting...informed me that they wanted to write "expressively". This was wonderful news!! Because it meant that they were really "writing their language" rather than just "transcribing from a video". So there is a major difference. Now, of course, from time to time, researchers will need to transcribe from video - and when they do that, they may want to write the signs receptively first, and then later "switch them over" to expressive writing for publishing. SignWriting is technically a very flexible system, that can record signs from any angle - we could even write signs from the side view or from the diagonal view if we needed this for research purposes. But the world standard is EXPRESSIVE. I hope this has helped! Please feel free to write again with more questions - Valerie :-) ________________________________ On June 10, 1998, Marie Alexander wrote: >I joined your group a wee while ago and I would now like to introduce >myself. I am the executive director of the Institute of Linguistics at >the University of Malta. I am a linguist but have recently decided that as >I am unlikely to live for ever (!) I need to focus on Maltese Sign >Language which has been developing very fast the last 15 years or so. >There is a great deal one could say about the deaf community in >Malta...but I will resist. > >After a visit to Professor Bencie Woll at City University London, I >decided we needed signwriting here...so that's how this all started. I >subsequently wrote in with this question: > I would appreciate it if anyone can tell me whether signwriting is >used expressively only by deaf users and receptively only by researchers. >Is it not very confusing for deaf researchers then? > I am still struggling with signwriting... I would appreciate some >advice. The study of Maltese Sign Language is only just beginning. >Maltese Sign Language is only now gaining recognition even by the Maltese >deaf themselves. It is not yet used extensively in education and not at >all beyond primary education since the majority of children are in the >mainstream. Of course it is a vicious circle. It started being used in >education once it gained some recognition. It is still a very young >language (since the deaf did not previously come together as a community >after school) but it is responding very fast to the demands made on it. > I would like not to have two ways of signwriting - but need to >stay in touch with the rest of the world if possible (maybe that is rather >ambitious!). >Perhaps my question arises from limited understanding? Can anyone help? > >Marie Alexander >Institute of Linguistics >University of Malta >Msida MSD 06 >Malta (Europe) ___________________________________________ Valerie Sutton :-) https://www.SignWriting.org Sutton at the DAC Deaf Action Committee For SignWriting Box 517, La Jolla, CA, 92038-0517, USA (619)456-0098 voice (619)456-0010 tty (619)456-0020 fax |
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