Vindication for ASL Literature
Supalla
total of ten chapters written by different contributors. I feel compelled to respond to Bauman's
assertion that "[w]hile Valli's analysis is linguistically precise, it may be perceptually murky - that
is, when one is watching the poem, the poetic lines do not distinguish themselves as such" (p. 96).
It would appear that Bauman was trying to 'get out of the line business' as indicated by the title of
his chapter. Bauman actually asked the question: "Is there even such a thing as a signed line?" (p.
95). I must respond that Bauman cannot both note Valli's poetic and linguistic analyses, and then
downplay the existence of lines for ASL. This appears contradictory in nature.
Also demanding my response is Bauman's assertion that deaf people have reported to him
that they do not detect the line break phenomenon in Valli's "Snowflake". For this, Bauman
referred to his 1996 presentation at a conference (thus without published data for me to review).
Bauman did not address my own paper with Ben Bahan. Given that I am a well-known storyteller
and researcher, I naturally have a keen interest in doing research on stories. I collaborated with
Ben Bahan who is also a master storyteller and wrote a paper on the topic of line segmentation in
ASL narratives. This paper was published in 1995. Like Valli, we provided data from one part of
Bahan's narrative, "Bird of a Different Feather". We demonstrated that the storyteller's use of eye
gaze plays an important role in demarcating lines. We also explained that the eye gaze behavior
occurs along with pausing and other non-manual behaviors for the line segmentation of ASL
narratives. We assumed that deaf people who view ASL narratives for enjoyment would not be
consciously aware of how they break these narratives down into lines. It is interesting to note that
before our research while performing around the country, I myself was not aware of the existence
of lines, but our research changed that.
In our paper, Bahan and I referred to the research literature on how oral texts (of spoken
languages) are universally structured in lines. The lines are grouped into stanzas, stanzas into
strophes, and so on. It seems reasonable to believe that both deaf and hearing people share the
cognitive capacities that shape the organization of oral texts. This includes how lines help signers
and speakers with processing oral texts. I find it interesting that Bauman wants ASL literature to
"be led away from the hegemony of hearing-centered (phonocentric) models of language and
literature..." (p. 99). I must ask why the notion of a hearing-centered model must matter for it
creates a division between deaf people and the rest of the human population.
There is one other note to discuss. The title of Bauman's chapter in his edited book
emphasizes the nature of deaf people's language as 'cinematic'. Bauman described Valli's
"Snowflake" as "a short poetic film" (p. 113). Calling Valli's composition a 'film' seems to place it
in a very different genre than the oral compositions of spoken languages. That consequently falls
into the category of peculiar, and Deaf First as mentioned earlier.
If ASL poems were truly cinematic, anyone should be able to follow them. From what I
understand, novice signers have difficulty following ASL poems or signing in general. It appears
that ASL is not as visually grandiose as Bauman claims it to be. I add that I am a native signer and
highly educated, yet it took me multiple viewings to fully appreciate some of Valli's poems. I
attribute this to content and linguistic complexity and ambiguity, and while I use my eyes to watch
"Snowflake", it is definitely not a movie.
I recall being in awe when watching Valli sign his poems in ASL for the first time (see also
Christie, 2018 for a culturally deaf person's testimony on the powerful impact of Valli's
"Dandelion" as a poem). Please understand that I was born deaf and never internalized English as
a spoken language. I do not easily relate to the English poems mentioned earlier. ASL poems are
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