Deaf folks aren’t the only ones using sign language, as we all know — from baseball umpires to the gnomes on airport tarmacs. The New York Times published an interesting infographic on the sign language used in the New York Mercantile Exchange here.
For me the most interesting thing was to see some parallels between a few of their signs and ASL; I wonder if they borrowed from ASL or from another root language from which ASL also borrowed from (stock and mercantile exchanges have been around a long time…).
Thoughts? Reactions?
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Very interesting! Here is a brief summary of Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s hand signals. You will notice it is slight different from NY. http://www.oxfordfutures.com/docs/Handsignals.pdf
this was so fun to read!
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Maybe I am more peevish than most, but I am somewhat annoyed that this is called a signed language. It is not a language. It is just a primitive system of symbols or signs.
On the same tangent, I am amused when vloggers like Carl Schroeder say that he’s teaching his dog ’sign language.’ By saying that, he’s contradicting his lifelong purpose of ASL advocacy. If dogs are capable of learning a ’sign language,’ what does that say about Deaf people?
E — I agree and disagree with your amusement of Carl. After all, we can teach a dog with voice as well — its the same principle. Teaching a dog to obey sign language vs obey spoken commands — same thing. Mmm. I think perhaps what it “says about deaf people” is in our heads?
Neither voice or signs are languages in and of themselves.
For you to conclude from my being peevish that I’m anti-ASL is presumptuous at best. I’m just saying that what you linked to is not a language. It is a system.
You can teach dogs a system of commands, but you cannot teach him language, spoken or signed, for chrissakes.
Anything that communicates is considered language… there is the language of the body, speech, non-verbal and so on. Just about all mammals have some sort of language. Geez lighten up…
Bobby, explain why you use “sign language” instead of “hand signals?”
Airport workers do this too. So does bus helper. Or anyone in trade. Football players liek the QB and defense middle linebacker will use audio in helmet.
WAD have a good point why you, Bobby, write about many hearing people in the society at large like the baseball umpire(s) use sign language, not “hand signals”.
Stock traders and other “service-related” providers simply use “hand signals” which really have nothing to do with the concept or linguistic structure of sign language,ex. ASL.
Scuba divers do use the hand signals for underwater communication , too.
E and Bobby, I laughed pretty hard after reading about Carl Schroeder attempted to teach his newfound dog some ASL. How true! I never thought about it.
More like the command signs than using the sign language. What about some dogs being not really visually-oriented for deaf people to teach them basic command signs? If some dogs happened to be the recarnination of oralist or AgBAD member from their past lives? How can we expect dogs to understand our command signs. Just a thought!
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
The commenters here do have a point. If you take “sign language” to be an actual language, then yeah, the NYME signs aren’t sign language any more than these are signs.
Like we talked about last week, language politics is quite a powerful thing…!
Still, thanks for sharing. I especially liked NYT’s approach to the Flash interface..swoosh swoosh sideways swoosh.
Correct; thanks for pointing that out politely Adam. I didn’t mean sign language in the context of a complete, actual language unto itself. It’s a little bit of splitting hairs, because even hand gestures count as language. But in the interest of being 100% accurate, hand gestures are perhaps a better way to describe it.