ASL Class 11/1/14

Unit – Storytelling Storytelling Please see the handout on page 102. Storytelling holds a place of special importance in cultures whose language has no written form. Deaf children learn the art of storytelling at residential schools for the Deaf where they learn to vividly recreate events and characters from Deaf adults who use ASL fluently. Members of the Deaf community commonly agree that storytelling is the most popular form of signed entertainment. The storyteller, the story, and the audience all play an important in the success of the telling. The storyteller, skilled with language, draws the audience in; the story, full of life, holds the attention of the audience; finally the audience gives its approval by repeating the story to others.

Unit – Storytelling “The Ball” by Ben Bahan Sam Supalla introduces Ben Bahan’s story, “The Ball”, an unique ASL story in which Ben artfully uses semantic classifiers to repesent various characters chasing after a runaway ball. These classifiers represent certain nouns such as vehicles, persons, four-legged animals, etc., and are used to show movement. The classifiers Ben uses in this story are listed below, with the nouns they represent in parentheses: 3-handshape (bicycle with a boy on it) Bent V-handshape (dog) 1-handshape (girl on rollerskates) Bent-1-handshape (old man) Horizontal-1-handshape (flying bird) Y-handshape (fat woman)

Unit – Storytelling “The Ball” by Ben Bahan He shows each character following the others as they chase the ball in different directions, around corners, uphill and down. He modifies the sighs and his non- manual behaviors to reflect the manner and qualities of each character. As Sam mentions in his introduction, the story is like many classic children’s stories, using repitition to create a special cadence. This repetition follows a series of events that builds to a dramatic climax.