Jul 02 2008
Sign language in global warming campaign
Saw this when we were at Sarah’s house on Sunday — an advert raising awareness of global warming, in British Sign Language.
There’s something unnatural about the signing that’s hard to get past though. Maybe it’s the lack of facial expression, which is very unusual. Thoughts? I haven’t been able to find any more information about the video other than the advertising company behind it.
I am no expert on sign language, but surely those in the video do show facial expressions.
Facial expressions are a natural thing which I believe may only be suppressed by hard training and focus.
I think what Dougal means is more that for sign language,there’s a distinct lack of facial expression. As a physical language BSL (and the other sign languages) relies hugely on non-manual features(i.e. non-hands, rather than non-physical). It is fair to say that signs on their own don’t have much meaning- each sign has its hand shape but then requires a movement or direction, and an associated facial and bodily movements before the full meaning is apparent. Over all I’d agree that there is a distinct lack of normal BSL facial expression in that video.
For my part, I think the phrasing is all wrong. There is no sentence flow in the videos. This may be because it is children and kids always have less nuanced language production than adults, but I’d be inclined to say it is a directorial thing- not least of all because some of the actors are older and the wee boy at the end seems perhaps the most natural! I think they’ve been asked to speak in a really slow and measured way, possibly so that a non signer might still catch some of the meaning.
Yep, it might be slowed down/made less fluid on purpose. It’s certainly a million miles away from Jerry talking about his cat.
I’ve just seen this, not sure how I missed it but never mind. I think it’s definitely the speed of the signing, very stilted though I do like the idea of the advert if not the execution.