American Sign Language Demystified by Kristin Mulrooney

Author:Kristin Mulrooney
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2010-03-14T05:00:00+00:00

If, however, you are across the room from the person with whom you wish to interact, you will need to move your arm in a more pronounced way, with the entire arm becoming involved:

In this larger wave, you use the shoulder as opposed to the wrist to produce the movement. The speed with which you wave can also vary depending on the urgency with which you need (or want) to get the person’s attention. If you start to wave frantically, you will give the impression that something is wrong.

• Tapping. Making physical contact with Deaf people by tapping them with your hand is an acceptable means of getting their attention. Contact is typically on the shoulder or arm. This method is used if you are in close proximity to a person. It also tends to be a method that people learning ASL are less comfortable using because English speakers are accustomed to far less physical contact when speaking than are ASL users when signing.

• Foot stomping/hand pounding. The final two common ways to get someone’s attention is to either stomp your foot or pound on a hard surface with which the Deaf person is in contact. The purpose of these approaches is to cause vibrations or other movement that the person can feel. For this reason, the surface with which you make contact will influence whether or not it will be effective. Stomping on grass, for instance, will be less effective than stomping on a wood floor. Common sense should guide the use of hand pounding as well. You don’t want to pound so hard on a table that you overturn beverages, for example. Look at these two methods on the DVD.

As with tapping, some people learning ASL are uncomfortable with pounding on a table. For English speakers, doing so usually indicates that someone is angry. ASL users do not have the same interpretation.

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