SASL Newsletter - Winter 2019 Issue Issue 16 - Winter 2019 | Page 2

SASL Executive Board 2019 – 2022 President Samuel J. Supalla University of Arizona [email protected] Vice President (vacant) Recording Secretary / Newsletter Editor Andrew P. J. Byrne University at Buffalo [email protected] Treasurer Harvey Nathanson Austin Community College [email protected] SASL Journal Editor-in-Chief Jody H. Cripps Clemson University [email protected] Board Directors Karen Alkoby Gallaudet University [email protected] Gabriel Arellano Georgetown University [email protected] Ron Fenicle Montgomery College [email protected] Russell Rosen CUNY – Staten Island [email protected] The Power of ASL By Andrew P. J. Byrne Unpacking the Literary Device of FORESHADOWING In the field of literature, I have always admired storytellers and poets who skillfully craft their narratives and poems while paying close attention to details by using different literary devices such as foreshadowing. This device is difficult to use because it requires a great deal of time and effort to seamlessly and effectively infuse it into a literary work for artistic effects. Similar to hyperbole and caricature, both of which I unpacked in the previous two issues, foreshadowing in American Sign Language (ASL) is not well understood. I believe that the PowerPoint presentation by Linda Wall and Shelley Potma in 2010 in Ontario, Canada first drew our attention to foreshadowing as used in ASL literary works by Ella Mae Lentz (The Door) and Sam Supalla (For a Decent Living) as two good examples. Both Lentz and Supalla are well known ASL literary performers in the United States. For this editorial, I will discuss what Wall and Potma have to say on foreshadowing and more. Please note that I will only cover Supalla's work for the description of how foreshadowing occurs in an ASL narrative. To begin, foreshadowing has a long tradition that goes back to the time of ancient Greece. Homer, a well-known Greek literary author, originally composed the two very long epic poems of the Illiad and the Odyssey orally. Both poems were later converted into written form (Fitzmyer, 1945; Jensen, 1994). “Because [the poems were] originally told orally [and due to their length], Homer had to keep the audience entertained and paying attention to the [poems] by using literary devices like foreshadowing and dramatic irony” (Owl Eyes, 2019, website). Found in all narrative genres (Murfin & Ray, 2018) and poetry, especially epics (Notopoulos, 1951), foreshadowing is “a literary device used…to hint about future events in the story. It is generally used to give insight of a future event within the confinement of a given narrative” (Bitrus, 2015, p. 54). Furthermore, “it actually prepares the [individuals] for the events that are about to happen. It spices up the story by creating dramatic tension or building a mystery. The [individuals] are made to guess ____ (Continue on the next page) 2 Winter 2019 – Issue 16