American Sign Language Commons^™

Coda, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of CODA (2021), directed by Siân Heder.

Exploring Accessibility And Social Inclusion For Children With Hearing Impairments In Residential Camps Through The Occupational Therapy Lens, Tiffany Coles

Student Capstone Papers

Children are encouraged to engage in various play, leisure, and social participation activities to enhance the development of life skills, independence, and social skills. A common leisure and social participation activity for children aged 6 to 18-years-old is to attend residential camp. Residential camps provide children a structured opportunity to engage in leisure activities while learning to become independent and self-confident when socializing and making new friends. Attending camp can be a fun and engaging environment to help accelerate growth in key developmental outcomes, such as positive identity, social skills, physical skills, positive values, and spirituality.

Within the residential camp …

American Sign Language Interpreting For D/Deaf Individuals With Disabilities: A Qualitative Study And Practical Guide, Emily Mason

Senior Honors Theses

American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting for d/Deaf individuals with disabilities (DWD) is a complex task, and one which lacks an adequate research-base to inform best practices. Using the foundation of existing literature on closely related topics such as the field of ASL interpreting, educational interpreting, education of DWD individuals, and research about specific disabilities occurring with d/Deafness, I compiled a literature review and created a theoretical conceptual framework concerning this topic. In further investigation of this subject, I also conducted a qualitative study through online questionnaires sent out by email to ASL interpreters located through snowball sampling. The data collected …

Social Isolation, Anxiety, And Stress Among Vrs/Vri Sign Language Interpreters During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Kolten Schnack

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in increased Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) and increased remote working for interpreters who work in Video Relay Services (VRS) as many have received temporary permission to work from home rather than a central call center. While certain occupational health risks such as stress and burnout for sign language interpreters who work in VRS have been studied, no one has studied general mental health among VRS sign language interpreters under the current pandemic (Dean et al., 2010; Schwenke, 2015; Wessling & Shaw, 2014). This study aimed to collect data on sign language interpreters’ experiences of social …

Cross-Linguistic Metaphor Priming In Asl-English Bilinguals: Effects Of The Double Mapping Constraint, Franziska Schaller, Brittany Lee, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Lucinda O'Grady Farnady, Karen Emmorey

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Meir’s (2010) Double Mapping Constraint (DMC) states the use of iconic signs in metaphors is restricted to signs that preserve the structural correspondence between the articulators and the concrete source domain and between the concrete and metaphorical domains. We investigated ASL signers’ comprehension of English metaphors whose translations complied with the DMC (Communication collapsed during the meeting) or violated the DMC (The acid ate the metal). Metaphors were preceded by the ASL translation of the English verb, an unrelated sign, or a still video. Participants made sensibility judgments. Response times (RTs) were faster for DMC-Compliant sentences …

Forced Transitions: Learning Asl In A Virtual Environment, Kara Gournaris

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Engagement with native language models is essential for second language acquisition. Social distancing mandates made this interaction nearly impossible for students learning American Sign Language (ASL), at a small rural university in western Oregon. COVID-19 brought with it many challenges, not the least of which was a hurried transition from face-to-face to online learning. The author found that some courses degraded in content and instruction when shifting to an online platform. Without access to community events where native language models were present, ASL students had less opportunities for incidental learning, legitimate peripheral participation, and connection within Deaf communities of practice.

A Qualitative Study Of American Sign Language Interpreting For Deaf Individuals With Disabilities, Emily A. Mason

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

There are complexities involved in American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting for the unique population of Deaf individuals with disabilities (DWD), particularly in educational settings, that must be considered. Based on the foundation of existing literature regarding the field of ASL interpreting, educational interpreting, and strategies of working with DWD individuals, the researcher created a theoretical conceptual framework that combined the frameworks of ASL Interpreting and Special Education. The current primary research is aimed at addressing another portion of the gap, that is, research regarding practical experiences in working with this population. This study was conducted through questionnaires sent out through …

Sasl Journal, Volume 3, Number 1

Society for American Sign Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Vision And Sensor-Based Signer-Independent Framework For Arabic Sign Language Recognition, Al-Shamayleh Ahmad Sami Abd Alkareem

Student Works (2020-2029)

Hearing and speech-impairment disability is widespread throughout the world. At present, 15 million people have this disability in the Arab world, and about 86% of them come from low- and middle-income countries. Meanwhile, sign language (SL) can be classified into standard Arabic sign language (ArSL) and local Arabic sign language (LArSL). ArSL is the formal standard and is the more acceptable SL in the Arab world; it is also considered as the medium of instructions for schools and universities as well as television news, shows and programmes. With the absence of usable ArSL recognition (ArSLR) platforms, hearing- and speech-impaired people …

Vaccine Literacy Among Deaf Adult American Sign Language Users Of Hearing Parents, Casey Lee Peck

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

Background: Communication barriers, the lack of proficiency in English, and poor communication with medical providers affect some Deaf people negatively in terms of health literacy. One contemporary controversial health literacy issue affecting Deaf people concerns vaccines. According to the literature, parents with higher health literacy are less likely to vaccinate their children as opposed to those parents with low health literacy (Veldwijk, van der Heide, Rademakers, Schuit, de Wit, Uiters & Lambooij 2015). Studies have shown that the majority of the deaf population have relatively low health literacy; however, vaccine literacy in the deaf population has not been investigated. Research …

I Saw The Signs: The Role Of American Sign Language In Preventing Violence Against Deaf Youth, Tolu Ojuola

Senior Honors Theses

The American Deaf community, comprised of approximately 500,000 people, has developed into a sociolinguistic, cultural community with American Sign Language (ASL) at its center. ASL is the autonomous language of Deaf individuals in America complete with its own grammar, orthography, syntax, and morphology. ASL is capable of conveying complex emotions and abstract ideas. However, most deaf children remain unable to express their innermost feelings because they live in homes with hearing parents who do not speak their language. For many deaf children, this is their first experience with isolation, but it is one they will grow familiar with as they …

I See What You're Saying: A Deaf Culture And American Sign Language Awareness Event, Alexis M. Sejnoha

Honors Thesis

Deaf Culture and American Sign Language are an important part of the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing community. Most people outside of this community are unaware of these aspects, and remain uneducated about them. This document is an event plan for an educational event about American Sign Language and Deaf Culture, as well as an artist statement explaining the conception and implementation of this plan, and how it was impacted by the Covid 19 pandemic.

Sasl Journal, Volume 2, Number 2

Society for American Sign Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Sasl Journal, Volume 2, Number 1

Society for American Sign Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Sasl Journal, Volume 1, Number 1

Society for American Sign Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Unique N170 Signatures To Words And Faces In Deaf Asl Signers Reflect Experience-Specific Adaptations During Early Visual Processing, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Katherine J. Midgley, Phillipp J. Holcomb, Karen Emmorey, David C. Plaut, Marlene Behrmann

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Previous studies with deaf adults reported reduced N170 waveform asymmetry to visual words, a finding attributed to reduced phonological mapping in left-hemisphere temporal regions compared to hearing adults. An open question remains whether this pattern indeed results from reduced phonological processing or from general neurobiological adaptations in visual processing of deaf individuals. Deaf ASL signers and hearing nonsigners performed a same-different discrimination task with visually presented words, faces, or cars, while scalp EEG time-locked to the onset of the first item in each pair was recorded. For word recognition, the typical left-lateralized N170 in hearing participants and reduced left-sided asymmetry …

A Data-Driven Approach To The Semantics Of Iconicity In American Sign Language And English, Bill Thompson, Marcus Perlman, Gary Lupyan, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Karen Emmory

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

A growing body of research shows that both signed and spoken languages display regular patterns of iconicity in their vocabularies. We compared iconicity in the lexicons of American Sign Language (ASL) and English by combining previously collected ratings of ASL signs (Caselli, Sevcikova Sehyr, Cohen-Goldberg, & Emmorey, 2017) and English words (Winter, Perlman, Perry, & Lupyan, 2017) with the use of data-driven semantic vectors derived from English. Our analyses show that models of spoken language lexical semantics drawn from large text corpora can be useful for predicting the iconicity of signs as well as words. Compared to English, ASL has …

Deaf Translators: What Are They Thinking?, Janis Cole Ms.

Journal of Interpretation

The examination of work performed by Deaf translators in creating translations between written texts and signed languages is an emerging area of inquiry in Translation Studies. Deaf people have been performing ad hoc translations within their community for hundreds of years (Adam, Carty & Stone, 2011; Bartley & Stone, 2008). More recently, Deaf translators have begun to work as paid professionals, creating a new subfield of Translation Studies, one that, to date, is largely unexplored. Using qualitative data, this pilot study examines the thought processes of two Deaf individuals in the rendering of an academic text from written English into …

An Exploration Of Kinesics In Black American Sign Language, Micayla Ann Whitmer

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

The relationship between kinesics, a sub-field of linguistics which focuses on the intersection of expressive language and nonverbal communication, and African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or Ebonics has been studied extensively; however, the existence of kinesics in Black ASL has not been studied. This study found that kinesics does in fact occur in Black ASL. In addition, this paper points out that although Black ASL has been compared with traditional or white ASL, Black ASL has yet to be extensively compared with AAVE. Data came from raw video footage collected during the Black ASL project and is available for public …

Growing Up Deaf In Appalachia: An Oral History Of My Mother, Elizabeth Shelton Tipton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the life experiences of a rural, Deaf Appalachian woman, Jane Ann Shelton, a second generation Deaf child born to Deaf parents from the communities of Devil’s Fork (Flag Pond, Tennessee) and Shelton Laurel (Madison County, North Carolina). Over two hours of videotaped interviews were interpreted and transcribed, followed by various other communications to describe the life of a rural, Deaf Appalachian woman without a formal high school degree. As an advocate and a political lobbyist in Tennessee during the 1980s and 90s, she was unparalleled by her peers (deaf or hearing) in her efforts to “enhance …

The Perceived Mapping Between Form And Meaning In American Sign Language Depends On Linguistic Knowledge And Task: Evidence From Iconicity And Transparency Judgments, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Karen Emmorey

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Iconicity is often defined as the resemblance between a form and a given meaning, while transparency is defined as the ability to infer a given meaning based on the form. This study examined the influence of knowledge of American Sign Language (ASL) on the perceived iconicity of signs and the relationship between iconicity, transparency (correctly guessed signs), ‘perceived transparency’ (transparency ratings of the guesses), and ‘semantic potential’ (the diversity (H index) of guesses). Experiment 1 compared iconicity ratings by deaf ASL signers and hearing non-signers for 991 signs from the ASL-LEX database. Signers and non-signers’ ratings were highly correlated; however, …

Baggage: An Original Script And Production Furthering The Evolution Of Deaf Theatre, Nikolya Sereda

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

As an homage to the musical RENT, I wrote and directed an original play entitled Baggage, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story, that was produced for the Gallaudet University Theatre Department’s spring 2019 production. Baggage follows three Deaf teenagers, Michaela, Gage, and Isabel, who connect through the music of RENT, as they find themselves entangled which ultimately ends in a falling out. The play also shows the experience of growing up in a hearing family as Michaela, Gage, and Isabel face frustration, underestimation, and neglect in their families. To spotlight the multifaceted ways of experiencing deafness, three songs from RENT were incorporated …

Second Language Acquisition Of American Sign Language Influences Co-Speech Gesture Production, Jill Weisberg, Shannon Casey, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Karen Emmorey

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Previous work indicates that 1) adults with native sign language experience produce more manual co-speech gestures than monolingual non-signers, and 2) one year of ASL instruction increases gesture production in adults, but not enough to differentiate them from non-signers. To elucidate these effects, we asked early ASL–English bilinguals, fluent late second language (L2) signers (≥ 10 years of experience signing), and monolingual non-signers to retell a story depicted in cartoon clips to a monolingual partner. Early and L2 signers produced manual gestures at higher rates compared to non-signers, particularly iconic gestures, and used a greater variety of handshapes. These results …

Pronouns In Asl-English Simultaneous Interpretation, David Quinto-Pozos, Kierstin Muroski, Emily Saunders

Journal of Interpretation

Pronominal systems across languages mark grammatical categories in different ways, and this can pose challenges for simultaneous interpretation. Pronouns can also be ambiguous, for example, by collapsing distinctions in some forms or by resembling demonstratives. We examine pronouns produced by a Deaf signer of American Sign Language (ASL) within a TEDx talk and how they are interpreted (simultaneously) by an ASL-English interpreter. Pronouns from both languages were coded and scrutinized for semantic correspondence across the two languages. Robust correspondences were found with some personal pronouns, especially first-person forms. However, mismatches across languages, in particular third-person forms and demonstratives, provide evidence …

American Sign Language Interpreters And Their Influence On The Hearing World, Madison Groat

Senior Honors Theses

This honors thesis is going to discuss the hearing community’s perception of American Sign Language and by association the hearing community’s perception of the Deaf community. For most of the hearing community their only interaction with American Sign Language is through watching an interpreter perform at their job. They personally have no physical interactions with the language. Even though they have never personally used the language or attempted to interact with the Deaf community they will draw their own conclusions about sign language and the Deaf community. The conclusions that are assumed tend to be incorrect. Early on in the …

South Carolina Educational Interpreting Center Annual Report, Stephen Fitzmaurice

Publications

Clemson University and its partners at the South Carolina State Department of Education and the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind manage the South Carolina Educational Interpreting Center (SCEIC) at the University Center in Greenville, South Carolina. The SCEIC provides national performance and knowledge assessments, mentoring and educational opportunities for South Carolina Educational Interpreters. This annual report details the SCEIC outputs and outcomes for Educational Interpreters in the state for the 2017-2018 academic year.

Staging Medea For D/Deaf Audiences In The 21st Century: Strategic Adaptation, Translation, And Production Approaches To Greek Theatre, Casey Johnson-Pasqua

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

Greek theatre and Deaf theatre are two forms of theatre that are on the opposite ends of a sensory spectrum. Greek theatre is auditory-based with an acoustically designed stage, seating twenty-five thousand. With two to three actors on the stage, movements are minimal, and masks are used to portray numerous characters. Visually based Deaf theatre uses movement through facial expression, body language, and American Sign Language. Because of this sharp contrast, there has been hesitancy in taking on a Greek play in Deaf theatre. Gallaudet University’s Theatre and Dance program has not produced an ancient Greek tragedy since Ethan Sinnott’s …

Understanding Deaf Culture, Meghan Flanagan

Senior Honors Projects

Culture defines people and gives them a sense of identity. It provides a community for individuals with similar beliefs and values to communicate with one another using a shared language. Deaf Culture encompasses these principles, but it is unique in that it has it’s own fully developed language known as American Sign Language (ASL). ASL is a verbal language that incorporates all of the linguistic components of a spoken language such as syntax, idioms, and dialect variation. It allows the deaf community to have a distinct sense of humor along with their own traditions, literature, and theater. All of these …

Referring Strategies In American Sign Language And English (With Co-Speech Gesture): The Role Of Modality In Referring To Non-Nameable Objects, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Brenda Nicodemus, Jennifer Petrich, Karen Emmorey

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

American Sign Language (ASL) and English differ in linguistic resources available to express visual–spatial information. In a referential communication task, we examined the effect of language modality on the creation and mutual acceptance of reference to non-nameable figures. In both languages, description times reduced over iterations and references to the figures’ geometric properties (“shape-based reference”) declined over time in favor of expressions describing the figures’ resemblance to nameable objects (“analogy-based reference”). ASL signers maintained a preference for shape-based reference until the final (sixth) round, while English speakers transitioned toward analogy-based reference by Round 3. Analogy-based references were more time efficient …

The N170 Erp Component Differs In Laterality, Distribution, And Association With Continuous Reading Measures For Deaf And Hearing Readers, Karen Emmorey, Katherine J. Midgley, Casey B. Kohen, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Phillipp J. Holcomb

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

The temporo-occipitally distributed N170 ERP component is hypothesized to reflect print-tuning in skilled readers. This study investigated whether skilled deaf and hearing readers (matched on reading ability, but not phonological awareness) exhibit similar N170 patterns, given their distinct experiences learning to read. Thirty-two deaf and 32 hearing adults viewed words and symbol strings in a familiarity judgment task. In the N170 epoch (120–240 ms) hearing readers produced greater negativity for words than symbols at left hemisphere (LH) temporo-parietal and occipital sites, while deaf readers only showed this asymmetry at occipital sites. Linear mixed effects regression was used to examine the …