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
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(Continue on the next page)
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Winter 2019 – Issue 16