Afterword
Meier
dominant hand, in contact with the extended index finger of the base hand. 2 Not for the
first time, distinctions are being made in ASL that are not being made in English.
Poetry
With the recognition of ASL as an independent language there was growing
awareness of the power of artistic signing as a means of expression for Deaf users of ASL.
Two papers published here, along with their associated commentaries, consider ASL poetry
from different—but complimentary—perspectives. Clayton Valli investigates the formal
structures that characterize poetic language; he uses the tools of linguistic analysis to
describe patterns of rhyme. Those rhyming patterns in turn allow him to identify lines
within ASL poetry. 3
In his commentary, Sam Supalla argues that Valli has adopted an “ASL First”
ideology on which ASL—as a full-fledged language much like any other language—may
use the same kinds of poetic devices (e.g., rhyme; organization into lines and stanzas) as
other languages. The fact that those other languages are generally spoken languages does
not mean, to Supalla, that ASL and spoken languages cannot draw from the same poetic
toolbox. Here’s the problem: Following Clayton Valli and his discussion of rhyme, we
must define our analytic vocabulary at an appropriate level of abstraction, one that allows
us to identify genuine similarities in the poetic traditions of signed and spoken languages. 4
At the same time we do not want to overlook real differences between those traditions.
Two questions come to my mind when I think about the poetics of ASL and other
signed languages: 1) Do different signed languages show different poetic traditions? For
example, has the history of Quebec’s Deaf community and the structure of its signed
language encouraged distinct artistic traditions amongst LSQ signers? 2) Are there effects
of language modality on poetics? Signed and spoken languages—while broadly similar—
may nonetheless show interesting structural differences; see Meier (2002) for discussion.
Here now is an interesting problem for further research and discussion: Spoken languages
are of course not visual languages (except in their written forms). Yet they show abundant
visual imagery in their poetry (e.g., Homer’s “rosy-fingered dawn”). In contrast, signed
languages use a visual medium to express visual concepts; do we see differences in the
2
For a video of this sign, see the Handspeak site:
https://www.handspeak.com/word/search/index.php?id=2975
3
Valli chose the word rhyme to label the poetic repetition of handshape, movement, or non-manual. He cites
Babette Deutsch (1969) for defining rhyme broadly to include the repetition not just of syllable nucleus and
coda, as in “The cad was had”, but the repetition of other phonetic elements, as in the alliteration of the name
Peter Pan. There are thus broad and narrow senses of rhyme; Valli’s extension of the broader usage of this
word to the study of sign poetics is perfectly appropriate. There is, in the analysis of spoken-language poetics,
even a concept of eye rhyme that may be applied to words that are spelled alike, but pronounced differently
(e.g., though, plough, and enough), or to correspondences of parts within a picture (Hutchison, 2011). [I thank
my colleague Tom Cable for discussion of rhyme.]
4
In our earlier discussion of Hockett’s design features, we saw this same problem. His choice of design
features—specifically the vocal-auditory channel—did not encourage linguists to search for the ways in
which signed and spoken languages might be similar in their structure and use.
SASLJ, Vol. 2, No. 2 – Fall/Winter 2018
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