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Beyond Words: ASL Seeks Its Own 'Sign of the Year'
22 Oct
Summary
- ASL lacks a 'sign of the year' despite growing recognition.
- Translating English neologisms into ASL often loses meaning.
- ASL's limited user base and dictionary data hinder tracking usage.
While linguists annually celebrate English 'words of the year,' American Sign Language (ASL) has yet to establish a similar 'sign of the year.' Deaf linguists point out that ASL, recognized as a distinct language, faces unique translation challenges. Complex English phrases often lose their intended meaning when interpreted into ASL, as direct sign-for-word translation fails to capture nuances and humor.
Kaj Kraus, a researcher, noted how English phrases like "rawdog" or "The scream I scrumpt" become literal in ASL, devoid of their original context and wit. This is partly because ASL verbs do not inflect for tense in the same way English verbs do.
Tory Sampson, another Deaf linguist, suggests that an ASL 'sign of the year' might be more meaningful if it represents older, expressive signs that have gained new dimensions of meaning related to current events, rather than focusing solely on novelty. ASL, being around 200 years old, is still evolving.
Furthermore, ASL has fewer than one million primary users globally. The absence of extensive digital dictionaries, comparable to those for English, makes tracking sign usage and selecting a representative sign difficult. This lack of a governing body for the signed lexicon necessitates intuitive assessment of sign popularity.
