Playing with Language

Send us Fan MailWelcome to Celebrate Creativity Episode 429  Playing with LanguageSnce the auditory characteristics of a Shakespearean play (such as puns and meter) are outside the frame of reference of a Deaf audience, puns can be shown in “plays on signs,” instead of “plays on words.”  Meter can be communicated though smooth and regular signs – the jerky interpreter who is searching for words cannot convey the inner stresses and beats in a line of text.  Instead of “rhythm in spoken language over a period of time,” the concept of meter can be communicated through “grace in space.”  Clear and flowing signing is the Deaf equivalent of articulate and smooth speaking in hearing actors.Rhetorical Devices: Balancing ShakespeareASL lends itself well to the expression of certain rhetorical devices.  While the interpreter and actors should never over emphasize the use of rhetoric, the principles involved in several of the classic figures of speech can inform an ASL translation and even make it clearer.  Schemes of balance, for example, take on a new dimension in ASL.  In parallelism with two elements, there is a similarity of structure in related words, phrases, or clauses.  The elements can be visually expressed by signing the first item of a series on one side of the body, and the second on the other side of the body.  ASL can use the concept of spatial relationships to show that the two elements are on the plane and balanced concepts.  The eyes see “the whole picture,” so a signer can use more than one sign concurrently.  For example, in Hamlet's  “to be or not to be” (The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, 3.1.17) soliloquy, the antithetical concepts of “life” and “death” can be signed at the same time – adding a new dimension to Hamlet's weighing two alternatives. Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.