Running head: REACHING OUT ANALYSIS 1

Reaching Out Analysis

Jessica Mink
University of Cincinnati

For our second project of this semester, I analyzed discourse in America Sign Language.
The focus of this exercise was to really hone in on the features of ASL that make up the
functions. Knowing this information is helpful in understanding and interpreting ASL because
being able to identify these functions and features and to practice identifying them will make it
easier to do this quicker and subconsciously in the future and it will improve our receptive skills
drastically.
Text Opening
The first function I identified and analyzed was text opening. Text opening is defined as
when a message is about to begin and the signals depend on the mode of communication that is
being used, whether it be in-person, telephone, email, etc. (Hatch, 1992, p.8). I found my text
opening example at time marker 00:00:10.140 through 00:00:13.760. I used body shifting and
turning, raising hands, sighing, and planting feet on the ground.
The presenter sighs toward the beginning of the presentation at 00:00:10.185-
00:00:11.105, as if he is letting out tension. This release of tension can be indicative of letting
out a breath to take another in and can be seen when people begin to speak or sign. Right after he
makes that sigh, the presenter turns his body and his attention to the audience. This happens at
time marker 00:00:10.345-00:00:11.335. This is after he walks onto the stage and he shows that
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he is going to be addressing the audience by turning to face and audience. At this point, it is
fairly obvious that he is going to start presenting soon. Shortly after he turns to the audience, at
time marker 00:00:10.385-00:00:11.635 the presenter raises his right hand to start signing
CURIOUS. At time marker 00:00:11.845-00:00:12.375, he raises his left hand to meet his right
hand in signing. This is the most obvious that he is opening a text in ASL because he would need
to bring his hands up to begin signing. Finally, for text opening, he took a stance and planted his
feet firming on the ground at time marker 00:00:11.350-00:00:12.370. He did this to show that
he was there and asserting his presence and basically saying, Hey, look at me. I have something
to say.
Text Closing
The next function that I looked at was text closing. Text closing signals are defined as
similarly to the text opening signalsas signals that indicate that a text is closing and they a
speaker or signer is finished presenting (Hatch, 1992, p.8). I found my text closing example at
time marker 00:12:30.900 through 00:12:36.190. The features I analyzed in this section were
putting hands down, eye gaze (looking down), rubbing his hands on his pant leg, and body
shifting and turning (turning away from the audience).
The first thing the presenter does in this sequence is bring his hands down. He does this at
time marker 00:12:33.755-00:12:34.415. When he brings his hands down to his sides, this is
indicative of him being done presenting and him ending his speech. Also, he does it with more
intent than if he were to just be resting his arms. The second thing the presenter does in this
sequence is that he looks down. He does this at time marker 00:12:34.440-00:12:35.310. He does
this to break the eye contact with the audience and intentionally ending the conversation, ending
the presentation. Right when he looks down, he also starts rubbing his hands on his pant leg at
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time marker 00:12:24.450-00:12:35.460. The presenter could do this because he wants to wipe
the sweat off his palms, indicating that he was nervous and now that he is wiping that
nervousness off his hands, he is done presenting. He could also metaphorically be wiping the
conversation off of his hands. Finally, the presenter turns away from the audience, shifting his
attention away from them and most certainly no longer looking at them. This happens at time
marker 00:12:34.630-00:12:35.890. This is representative of leaving this conversation and
leaving the people in the audience. He literally is turning away to walk off-stage and out of the
spotlight.
Time Mapping
The third function I looked at in this source text was time mapping. Time mapping is a
part of spatial referencing and it is the concept of a signer using the space around them to
organize events that happened in time (Winston, 1996, p.406). I looked at two examples within
the source text. The first example is at time marker 00:01:12.050 through 00:01:19.360 and the
second example is at time marker 00:01:26:740 through 00:01:30.660. The features I identified
within these examples were the presenter putting his head down, body shifting, eyebrows raising,
body placement and eye gaze.
In the first example, the presenter first puts his head down at time marker 00:01:14.450-
00:01:15.520. At this time, the presenter was looking at his space before utilizing it. Then, at
time marker 00:01:14.590-00:01:16.200, the presenter walks to his left and shifts his body to
give his body a new placement on the stage. In doing so, he is basically walking back in time to
map out the time in his head. Along with that walking back in time, at time marker 00:01:15.520-
00:01:16.530, he shifts his body around after walking to his new time period. This shows that he
is talking basically about the same thing but it is a different time period. Then, at time marker
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00:01:15.590-00:01:17.530, the presenter introduces the new time period and his eyebrows raise
to indicate this new time frame. This is a natural expression when starting something new in
conversation.
In the second example, the presenter raises his eyebrows at time marker 00:01:27.470-
00:01:30.280. This is again to indicate that he is setting up a new time frame (from beginning to
end). This is again to show that something new is being introduced. Along with this, at time
markers 00:01:28.010-00:01:28.890 and 00:01:28.890-00:01:29:840, the presenter shifts his
body in manner to show that his is placing these times and where they will be located in the
spatial map. At time marker 00:01:28.030-00:01:29.550, the presenter puts his head down toward
his hands to look at and draw attention to the space he is setting up for his time line. He is
physically showing how his timeline is set up, from beginning to end. Finally, at time marker
00:01:28.390-00:01:29.600, the presenter (to go along with his head being down) physically
looks at his hands to draw the attention necessary to emphasize the beginning to end piece of
spatial time mapping.
Topic and Subtopic Shift
The fourth function I looked at and analyzed in this piece was topic and subtopic shift
which is described as almost a subcategory of openings because it signals an appropriate time in
a conversation to start a new topic or change what you are talking about (Winston, 2013, p.1).
Specific features can clearly be seen when the presenter brings up a new topic at time markers
00:01:46.920-00:01:54.380 and 00:02:55.130-00:03:01.560. The features I noticed in these
sections were hand gestures, putting his hands down, raising his eyebrows, and changing his eye
gaze.
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In the first example, he first raises his eyebrows at time marker 00:01:47.260-
00:01:49.170 to indicate that he is ending one topic. It can be implied from this that a new topic
will be beginning. Then at time marker 00:01:48.840-00:01:49.170, the presenter made a hand
gesture as if he were pointing to the new topic. He pointed to a new space on the stage with his
thumb and then he walked to that spot before starting the new topic. As he walked to this new
spot on the stage, at time marker 00:01:49.290-00:01:50.850, he looked down at the spot he was
walking toward to really focus on that spot because that spot on the stage was representative of
the new time frame. At time marker 00:01:50.050-00:01:51.730, the presenter puts his hands
down before starting the new topic. This is indicative that he is basically wiping the slate clean
on his hands so he can start a new topic.
In the second example, the presenter first puts his hands down to indicate that he is
wiping the topic slate clean. This takes place at time marker 00:02:56.370-00:02:57.210 and then
right afterward, he pulls his hands back up to start the new topic. After the cleaning of the slate,
the presenter makes a small hand gesture, almost barely visible, at time marker 00:02:57.780-
00:02:58.480 where heas he did in the first examplepointed or gestured to the space where
his PowerPoint was, indicating that he was starting a new topic. After he made this gesture, at
time marker 00:02:59.690-00:03:01.570, he raised his eyebrows. As stated above, raising ones
eyebrows is a clear non-manual indication that a new topic will be brought up next. With this, he
places his new topic at time marker 00:02:59.830-00:03:01.000. When the presenter places the
new topic, he looks at his hands as he starts signing it. He does this to show emphasis and to
draw attention to his new topic that he has just started.
Comparison
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The fifth, and final, function that was analyzed with this source text was comparison.
Comparisons, like time mapping, is a part of spatial referencing and comparisons are when two
or more things are compared using different signing space for each (Winston, 1991, p.403). Two
examples were analyzed at time markers 00:00:35.610-00:00:42.260 and 00:04:26:390-
00:04:36.060. The features that were noticed were body shifting, eyebrow raise or furrow, eye
gaze, and mouth movements.
In the first example, the first thing that the presenter does when starting his comparison is
furrow his eyebrows at time marker 00:00:35.610-00:00:36.550. He does this to show that the
next statement coming upthe comparisonis something that requires thought and
consideration. The next thing, at time marker 00:00:36.120-00:00:37.240, the presenter shifts his
body to his left. He does this to display that he is shifting to one place: the developing countries.
While he is on the developing countries side, at time marker 00:00:37.220, he looks more toward
the developed country/America side, as if to inform the American side of the information that
comes next. Meanwhile, starting at time marker 00:00:37.350-00:00:39.540, the presenter raises
his eyebrows to bring attention to his statement and to show surprisefor emphasisat the
statement he is making. After that, at time marker 00:00:40.730-00:00:42.050, he shifts back to
the America side to indicate that here is America. This shows clarity in his statement. Next,
at time marker 00:00:41.220-00:00:42.110, he shifts his eye gaze back to America because what
he is saying relates to Americansand developing countriesand he looks toward that space to
address the American people. Meanwhile, starting at 00:00:41.350-00:00:42.290, he gives an
mm-frown face to show emphasis on NOTHING, which he was signing. This is to make the
nothing seem more obvious and profound.
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In the second example, at time marker 00:04:28.300-00:0429.270, the presenter shifts his
body and changes his eye gaze at the same time. This is to show the differing values in the
groups. He is showing the different desires of the group. At time marker 00:04:34.880, the
presenter shows the mm-frown mouth shape and he uses this, again, for emphasis. He wants to
show that what he is saying is negative and that when he said it, it felt certain. Meanwhile, at
time marker 00:04:35.210-00:04:36.050, body shifting, eyebrow furrow, and eye gaze change
take place simultaneously. The body shift shows that he is becoming the people who are saying
no. the eyebrow furrow supports that what he is saying is negative and the eye gaze is directed at
the American/developed side to again, address that group of people and draw attention to what
was just said by the developed country to the underdeveloped country.
Overall Comparison
Analyzing discourse in American Sign Language proved to be much different than
analyzing discourse in English. There are many reasons that play into this, being that ASL is my
second language, ASL is a manual language, etc.
American Sign Language is my second language and though I have been through a lot of
training on my second language, I am still, and will likely always be, more proficient in my first
language, English, than my second. This being said, when we were analyzing the English source
text in project one, I had an easier time identifying the functions and the features because even
when we just talked about it in class, I could envision it much easier than when we were talking
about the same things in ASL. This is because I have notices these nonverbal features in English
before even starting this class. I did not have a name to them and I did not know how to use
them, but I am proficient enough in English that in the past, I have been able to look deeper than
just what was said without compromising my understanding of the message.
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On the other hand, I am still in a stage where I have to consciously try to understand
American Sign Language so I have not had to chance to really look deeper into the text and see
how the different structures made up the language and the text. Therefore, it took me a little
longer to see the different functions and features, but once I got rolling, I understood a lot better.
In the first project where we analyzed the English discourse, I used back channeling,
referencing, topic opening, turn-taking, and topic/subtopic shift as the functions of that text. In
this American Sign Language project, I used text opening, text closing, time mapping,
topic/subtopic shift, and comparison. Considering English and ASL have two completely
different modes (one spoken, one signed), it seems obvious that they would have different
functions. For example, time mapping makes sense in ASL because it is a visual language. It is
unique in that you show the time laid out around you, in front of you, behind you and in English
you speak the time frames so it is not necessary to map it out.
Another thing that is unique to analyzing American Sign Language or other signed
language texts is comparisons. In English, I am sure there is some shifting involved and there are
likely distinct things that happen when a speaker is making a comparison, but in ASL it is a more
unique experience. In ASL, a signer is required to shift into the different things that are being
compared and if there is no shifting, it is near impossible to understand that it is a comparison.
I was unable to use turn-taking in the American Sign Language text project. I have
always really enjoyed looking at the art of turn-taking and seeing how people just know that it is
their time to go. It fascinates me that this is something that is engrained into most, but not all,
peoples brains at a young age. Nevertheless, there was no opportunity for this in the ASL text
because it was a presenter on a stage and there was no dialogue.
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Conclusion
It is fascinating to me how these things, these non-verbal/non-manual cues are so
essential for our understanding of language. In English, if we just listened to a monotone speaker
through a radio to where we cannot see their nonverbal, first of all, the speech would be
incredibly boring, and second of all, we would have a hard time picking up cues of whether it
was our turn to speak, whether the speaker was closing out or not, etc.
In American Sign Language, I think it would be even more difficult to understand the
text, mainly because it is my second language. I am dependent on the accurate display of signs
and non-manual signals to help me understand the message. Imagine if someone did a
comparison or explained time without shifting or using the space around them. It would be
several times more difficult to understand that person.
This brings me back to something our interpreting teachers tell us quite often: show,
dont tell. Sometimes as students and people who are not fluent in American Sign Language, we
can get stuck in English Mode and we have a hard time breaking away from that. Something
that has helped me in our classes and professional development sessions lately is our teachers
reminding us to show the message or story and not to tell it.
This assignment has helped me to see just how important showing the message really is. I
have gotten to pick out exactly what makes an ASL message understandable and I can remember
these and incorporate this into my own signing and my own interpretations. It is especially
important to interpreting because when we take the English source message and interpret it into
ASL, we need to remember to break away from that and use these important features in language
to express and show the interpretation with our body and on our hands.
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References
Hatch, E. (1992). Discourse and language education. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Winston, E. A. (1991). Spatial referencing and cohesion in an American Sign Language text.
Retrieved from https://blackboard.uc.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-9661942-dt-content-rid-
60734834_2/courses/14SS_SLI3014001/Spatial%20Ref%20and%20Cohesion%20SLS%
20Winter%201991%281%29.pdf.
Winston, E. A. (2013). Discourse analysis structures: Instructor commentary. Retrieved from
https://blackboard.uc.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-9477515-dt-content-rid-
54321793_2/courses/14SS_SLI3014001/IC%20Hatch%201%202%20Eng.pdf.