Assessing Communicative Effectiveness and the Conventions of International Sign by Lori Whynot

Recent decades have seen increased visibility of the signing contact phenomenon, International Sign (IS).  Website video blogs publish information in IS for a global Deaf audience, and international Deafness-related conferences regularly adopt it as an auxiliary conference "language" to make content accessible to varied signed language users.  

There are unexamined assumptions about what information can be successfully conveyed with IS.  Furthermore, there is insufficient research to inform teaching or interpreting with it, yet IS training is in demand. IS is described as a complex pidgin which employs similar structures found in conventional national signed languages (Supalla,1995; Padden,1993, Moody, 2002; Allsop, Woll, and Brauti, 1995; Locker McKee & Napier, 2002; Rosenstock, 2004, Rosenstock, 2008).  The only study of comprehension suggests that this 'de facto' lingua franca is more readily understandable by North American or Western signed language users who viewed interpreters using it (Rosenstock, 2004).  There is still more to learn about factors that afford and limit understanding of International Sign. This presentation describes a current PhD project that analyzes conventions of lexicon and depiction observed in expository IS, as created by diverse Deaf, international signers.  Comprehension is subsequently assessed in five different countries using a mixed methods approach. The research examines sociolinguistic factors and the extent that discourse information in IS is conveyed to viewers from distinctly different signed language backgrounds.  It offers defining parameters of IS and suggests differences between comprehension of IS and conventional national signed languages.

Lori Whynot, M.A., CI & CT, SC:L is an ASL-English interpreter with 22 years of experience comprising medical, government, higher education, conference, legal, and international settings. A mentor and educator, she teaches topics in interpreting, sign language linguistics, and provides workshops on health care interpreting and reflective practice with DC-S. Lori is a native of the Boston area, where in 1998 she earned a Master's degree in Intercultural Relations, applying it to interpreting in a multi-cultural community. She currently lives in Australia with her life partner and is pursuing a PhD in Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney.