SignWriting

Sutton SignWriting, or simply, SignWriting, is a system of writing sign languages. It is highly featural and visually iconic, both in the shapes of the characters, which are abstract pictures of the hands, face, and body, and in their spatial arrangement on the page, which does not follow a sequential order like the letters that make up written English words. It was developed in 1974 by Valerie Sutton, a dancer who had, two years earlier, developed DanceWriting. Some newer standardized forms are known as the International Sign Writing Alphabet (ISWA).For the top sign, the arrows show that the two '1' hands move in vertical circles, and that although they move at the same time (tie bar), the left hand (hollow arrowhead) starts away from the body (thin line) going up while the right hand (solid arrowhead) starts near the body (thick line) going down. Sutton SignWriting, or simply, SignWriting, is a system of writing sign languages. It is highly featural and visually iconic, both in the shapes of the characters, which are abstract pictures of the hands, face, and body, and in their spatial arrangement on the page, which does not follow a sequential order like the letters that make up written English words. It was developed in 1974 by Valerie Sutton, a dancer who had, two years earlier, developed DanceWriting. Some newer standardized forms are known as the International Sign Writing Alphabet (ISWA). As Sutton was teaching DanceWriting to the Royal Danish Ballet, Lars von der Lieth, who was doing research on sign language at the University of Copenhagen, thought it would be useful to use a similar notation for the recording of sign languages. Sutton based SignWriting on DanceWriting, and finally expanded the system to the complete repertoire of MovementWriting. However, only SignWriting and DanceWriting have been widely used. Although not the first writing system for sign languages (see Stokoe notation), SignWriting is the first to adequately represent facial expressions and shifts in posture, and to accommodate representation of series of signs longer than compound words and short phrases. It is the only system in regular use, used for example to publish college newsletters in American Sign Language, and has been used for captioning of YouTube videos. Sutton notes that SignWriting has been used or investigated in over 40 countries on every inhabited continent. However, it is not clear how widespread its use is in each country. In Brazil, during the FENEIS (National Association of the Deaf) annual meeting in 2001, the association voted to accept SignWriting as the preferred method of transcribing Lingua Brasileira de Sinais (Libras) into a written form. The strong recommendation to the Brazilian government from that association was that SignWriting be taught in all Deaf schools. Currently SignWriting is taught on an academic level at the University Federal de Santa Catarina as part of its Brazilian Sign Language curriculum. SignWriting is also being used in the recently published Brazilian Sign Language Dictionary containing more than 3,600 signs used by the deaf of São Paulo, published by the University of São Paulo under the direction of Prof. Fernando Capovilla (EJ669813 – Brazilian Sign Language Lexicography and Technology: Dictionary, Digital Encyclopedia, Chereme-based Sign Retrieval, and Quadriplegic Deaf Communication Systems. Abstracted from Educational Resources Information Center). Some initial studies found that Deaf communities prefer video or writing systems for the dominant language, however this claim has been disputed by the work of Steve and Dianne Parkhurst in Spain where they found initial resistance, later renewed interest, and finally pride. 'If Deaf people learn to read and write in their own signing system, that increases their self-esteem', says Dianne Parkhurst. As of 2010, SignWriting is widely used at International Sign forums. It is adopted in as many as 40 countries, among which are Brazil, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Tunisia, and the United States. SignWriting, as the International Sign Writing Alphabet (ISWA), has been proposed as the manual equivalent to the International Phonetic Alphabet. However, some researchers argue that the SignWriting is not a phonemic orthography and does not have a one-to-one map from phonological forms to written forms.:163 Although such a claim is disputed, it has been recommended that countries adapt this sign on a language-by-language basis. There are two doctoral dissertations that study and promote the application of SignWriting to a specific sign language. Maria Galea wrote about using SignWriting to write Maltese Sign Language. Also, Claudia Savina Bianchini wrote her doctoral dissertation on the implementation of SignWriting to write Italian Sign Language. In SignWriting, a combination of iconic symbols for handshapes, orientation, body locations, facial expressions, contacts, and movement are used to represent words in sign language. Since SignWriting, as a featural script, represents the actual physical formation of signs rather than their meaning, no phonemic or semantic analysis of a language is required to write it. A person who has learned the system can 'feel out' an unfamiliar sign in the same way an English speaking person can 'sound out' an unfamiliar word written in the Latin alphabet, without even needing to know what the sign means.