By Emily Shaw (Professor of Interpretation and Translation) and Julie A. Hochgesang (Professor of Linguistics), Gallaudet University
Presentation for Sociolinguistics Symposium 25 (SS25), June 25, 2024
Abstract To consider engagement with everyday practice, we look at one monologic narrative in American Sign Language (ASL) (Dunn, 2021) from the O5S5 ASL data (Hochgesang et al., 2021) in which a deaf person describes her experience going to the grocery store for the first time during the pandemic and she needs to wear a mask. The signs she uses for mask, while referring to a real object, transform into a metaphorical barrier to the hearing space she needs to navigate. The crux of the narrative is to highlight how she experienced masking as a literal silencing, her inability to communicate with hearing employees who were masked while physically distancing.
Our presentation will walk through a microanalysis of each instance of [MASK] and look at how the sequential variations in sign choice reflect different conceptualizations of the experience of being a signing deaf person in a hearing space. Over the trajectory of the narrative, we see how depiction (Dudis, 2011) figures in the innovative expression of the concept [MASK] which takes on at least five symbolic forms in this particular piece. At the time of its creation, the narrative encapsulated a very ordinary moment in the life of deaf people at the beginning of the pandemic. To relay this ordinary moment, as we will show, required multiple linguistic innovations representing the mask itself and more importantly the experience of being stifled in (extra)ordinary ways.
Bio Emily Shaw is a professor of the Department of Interpretation and Translation at Gallaudet University. Julie A. Hochgesang is a professor of the Linguistics Department at Gallaudet University.
Emily Shaw and Julie A. Hochgesang are the current co-editors of the Sociolinguistics Series for Gallaudet University Press.
What follows are notes for this presentation.
Printable version
To cite these presentation notes:
Shaw, E. & Hochgesang, J.A. (2024). MASKed and muted: An ordinary narrative of the Deaf experience in Covid. figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24653634
To cite presentation:
Shaw, E., & Hochgesang, J. A. (2024, June 25). MASKed and muted: An ordinary narrative of the Deaf experience in Covid. SS25, Perth, Australia. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24653634
Introduction
Theoretical Frameworks
The Narrative
Quantitative Information About Narrative
Narrative Analysis
Narrative Clause Structure
Bonus Content
Conclusion
References
Introduction
To consider engagement with everyday practice, we look at one monologic narrative in American Sign Language (ASL) (Dunn, 2021) from the O5S5 ASL data (Hochgesang et al., 2021) in which a deaf person, Renca Dunn, describes her experience going to the grocery store for the first time during the pandemic and she needs to wear a mask. The mask, while a real object, transforms into a metaphorical barrier to the hearing space she needs to navigate. The crux of the narrative is to highlight how she experienced masking as a literal silencing, her inability to communicate with hearing employees who were masked plus physically distancing.
Note that we use “muted” in our title, and we acknowledge “mute” as being a term in the community that was assigned to us by outsiders to remark on our inability to “speak”. In this presentation, we intentionally use that word in a way that honors how Renca depicts that masked experience where she feels she cannot express herself as she would want to, hence “MASKed and muted”.
While preparing for this presentation, one of us – Julie – got Covid! And for the first time. Since she was working at home with her children who weren’t sick around, Julie had to mask up. Here’s a screenshot of Zoom windows with Emily on top signing mask and Julie on the bottom wearing a mask and indicating it. You can also see the ELAN file for the video narrative that will be analyzed in this presentation in the background.
The open-access narrative analyzed in this presentation is from the O5S5 ASL project. This language documentation project was initially conducted by a Field Methods graduate class in the linguistics department at Gallaudet University during Fall 2021. Fall 2021 was the first time students and faculty returned to campus in person (masked!) after a year of being wholly online. That class collected data in different ways – interviews were conducted over Zoom, in-person masked, outside masked or not masked with physical distancing. Short filmed narratives could also be submitted by participants themselves which meant participants could record privately in a safe space without any masking required. We also cataloged online videos about the pandemic. We also recorded more videos during the sociolinguistics class taught by Emily in Spring 2022 which Julie also joined as a co-instructor. We collected more interviews then. Since then we’ve been working on preparing the data – videos, transcripts and the like – to be shared as open access. It’s still a work in progress.
Theoretical frameworks
Deborah Schiffrin (1996)’s work on personal narratives and social identity influenced our analysis – her particular take on narrative analysis connects lexical and utterance-level items to broader sociocultural displays of identity which is something we are also interested in here.
“…stories are resources not just for the development and presentation of a self as a psychological entity, but as someone located within a social and cultural world.”
(Schiffrin 1996:169)
Our analysis of the narrative, like Schiffrin’s, centered on the forms and meanings of “mask” as situated within the textual structure of the narrative (e.g., both how and when the signs were expressed)
“The form of our stories (their textual structure), the content of our stories (what we tell about), and our story-telling behavior (how we tell our stories) are all sensitive indices not just of our personal selves, but also of our social and cultural identities.”
(Schiffrin 1996:170)
We also draw upon the work of Labov and Waltzky (1967) for our narrative analysis as well as those studying depiction as a method of signaling (Dudis 2011; Clark 2016; Ferrara & Hodge 2018).
The Narrative
In this presentation, we are looking at Renca Dunn’s narrative. As we described before, it’s from the O5S5 ASL documentation project.
Each open-access narrative is credited to the participant who submitted the narrative. For example, the citation information for Renca’s video is as follows:
Dunn, R. (2021). 211201_O5S5_N_RD. From O5S5ASL. YouTube. Uploaded by Julie Hochgesang, 2023. https://youtu.be/GOBih7XZtGU, From O5S5ASL. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16983517.v2
Before diving into the narrative analysis as well as a close look at the use of “mask” signs, we wanted to share some quantitative information about the narrative.
The utterances in this video were segmented as ASL utterances to which we added English translations. For the 723 signs (some false starts, some unclear, some two-handed, some one-handed, mostly right but sometimes on left while other sign holds a sign), we were careful to not overcount by counting signs produced on both hands only once.
We used ELAN (Wittenberg et al 2006) to annotate this video. You can access the .eaf (ELAN annotation file) on the website, YouTube video or here. We used ASL Signbank connected to ELAN as well as SLAASh annotation conventions (Hochgesang 2022).
We also coded for narrative clause type based on the structure of the narrative (Labov and Waltzky 1967). We also added thematic notes for elements that struck us, leading us to focus on the narrator’s choices for representing the “mask” in the narrative.
Quantitative Information About Narrative
Here we list the top 15 signs that were used in the narrative – top 15 conventional signs. That is, signs that had ID gloss labels in the ASL Signbank.
While the English ID gloss labels we have here for each ASL sign are close translation equivalents in some cases, we shouldn’t read them as perfect translations. Rather they’re textual labels for searching signs. For example “EARix” really means to be able to hear in this narrative. Also we were careful to not double-count signs since we annotate for signs on both right and left hand tiers in ELAN.
And these top 15 signs serve nicely as thematic categories we see in this narrative – feelings, observations, food stores, masking, frustration, communication, language, and hearing (or lack of).
Here we list the top types of signs – categories as used with ASL Signbank and SLAASh conventions (Hochgesang 2022) – which we mention here because we talk about the strategies that are used in the narrative, particularly the difference between the conventional signs for “mask”. There are a few variants used in ASL in North America and Renca uses MASKh which shows the outline of the mask (and reveals the mouth, which isn’t true as we know). She also depicts the mask with 🫱 labeled as DS_b(mask) in our annotation file.
Conventional signs, 634 in the narrative, are those that have ID gloss labels in ASL Signbank.
IX stands for “index” finger and is the textual label we used for pointing signs (which use the index finger to point, hence “index (IX)”). IX includes pointing both at self, away from, in arc or tracing (167 in total, 123 first person, _1). This count also includes 4 possessive pronouns which use the fully extended handshape – 🫱.
DS, which stands for depicting signs, in which aspects of the phonological form can be more meaningful or referential, especially the handshape (Dudis 2011). There are 75 depicting signs in the narrative.
PU, which stands for palm up, which could in its own right be one of the most frequent signs as listed in the prior image, but here we list it as a discourse marker. It occurs 54 times in the narrative.
FS, which stands for fingerspelling, (also includes the more namesign-like form for the food store Trader Joe’s) occurs over 30 times in the narrative.
Finally, YYY, which stands for an observable sign in which we can see the phonological form clearly but don’t know the meaning, occurred 4 times in the narrative.
We were careful about not overcounting for conventional signs but may be some overcounting with depicting signs and PU.
The focus of our analysis is Renca’s signing of the concept of “mask” and how she differs in portraying it. Repetition of lexical forms has been shown to “display different aspects of self” (Schiffrin 1996:196). Here we see the “deaf self” in conflict with the “hearing other” – the crux of the conflict being the mask as a symbol of communication impediment.
Our presentation focuses on the analysis of each instance of [MASK] and how the sequential variations in sign choice reflect different conceptualizations of the experience of being a signing deaf person in a hearing space. Over the trajectory of the narrative, we see how depiction (Dudis 2011; Clark 2016; Ferrara & Hodge 2018). figures in the innovative expression of the concept “mask” which takes on at least five symbolic forms in this particular piece. At the time of its creation, the narrative encapsulated a very ‘ordinary’ moment in the life of deaf people at the beginning of the pandemic that required multiple linguistic innovations to represent the mask itself but more importantly the experience of being stifled in (extra)ordinary ways – Hearing-deaf interactions in public spaces, disconnection, masks as additional barriers, physical distancing as additional barriers. Dunn portrays these barriers throughout the narrative. That is, the mask is the cause of the inability to communicate and help the narrator get what she needs in the store. Along with the mask, we see physical distancing and unwillingness of employees to communicate in an accessible way as problematic.
The prominence of the “mask” means it is now a “character” or “prop” in the narrative. It is portrayed as part of her physical appearance, her embodied experience as a deaf person in a hearing-dominated space, as a metaphorical barrier. Language features such as repetition, relative distance from the screen (see Emboxed Discourse later), and depiction are used to convey these elements.
Note that the narrator Renca can’t use the conventional variant for “mask” (MASKh, ASL Signbank, 2024) throughout the narrative because the phonological structure maps on the the loops of the mask in the conceptual structure and makes it seem like the mouth is visible when we know it isn’t. At times in the narrative, Renca switches to another phonological form – the fully closed hand which looks more like an actual mask and does the job of covering the mouth, essential to her meaning. That is, the depictive form better maps on the iconic aspect she wants to convey.
This very brief moment in Renca’s narrative shows how Renca initially produces MASKh but quickly changes to DS_b(mask) because it is a better iconic form at that point in her narrative.
Here we see quite a bit of difference between MASKh and DS_b(mask). There are 9 instances of MASKh but their total duration is 2.72 seconds. We have 8 instances of the depictive form for “mask” but the total duration is 9.56 seconds.
Narrative Analysis
We don’t show the narrative in its entirety in this presentation. Instead, we focus on certain clips that highlight the narrator’s use of “masking” or some aspect of the narrative analysis. Here we describe these clips.
Clip 1 – This clip contains Renca’s first mention of the masks, all three forms. The first clip we will show comes from the orientation where she’s providing context about the narrative. She first gives an overview of her feelings at that time before entering the store. In quick succession, she happens to sign all three forms in a single utterance. As you will see, this sets the stage for the rest of the narrative. She signs DS_1(thin-object), MASKh, then DS_b(mask-fully-cover-mouth) in quick succession to establish the physical, sensed experience of putting on the mask.
Clip 2 – The next clip comes from the part of the narrative where Renca has just entered the grocery store. Up until this point she has explained her experience in the store, following protocol, and now realizing she actually needs to ask a worker for help. She vividly describes the arrows that were taped to the floor and the strict protocols enforced by the store to maintain social distance. Crucially, at this point, she relays that she did not want to have to ask for help once she was in the store. She tells us that she was intent on getting in and out of the store without having to interact with anyone. Unfortunately, once she got in the store she realized there was one item on her list that she could not find. This becomes the source of the conflict in her story because, of course, it meant that she would have to approach an employee and ask for help. She gives a close-up look at that experience of having to communicate with a hearing, non-signing employee who is also masked.
Clip 3 – Renca then describes how she used an app called big text to write the name of the item she needed, here you will see her showing the employee her phone and the employee squinting to see what she had typed. In this clip, there is a clear depiction of this experience from her viewpoint. She holds out her hand as if holding her phone as she had typed out her request to the employee which she was trying to show them. She then signs DS_b(mask) to remind us that the employee could not see her mouth. She covers her mouth and then waves her other hand in the air to show what she did to get the employee’s attention for an extended time, around 2 to 3 seconds.
Clip 4 – Here the tension has built as she is facing off with the employee unable to understand. We will see the moment when Renca finally gets the hearing employee’s attention. Renca enacts the moment when the employee approaches her in a very clever depicted scene. She depicts the employee as walking slowly toward her, squinting their eyes and tilting their head back as if they can’t see her – the overall impression is that this person was standoffish and aloof. Here, you will see her rendition of the employee approaching her and then how she engages with them face-to-face. Renca struggles in getting the employee to look at her phone where she had typed out her request for that missing item. You will likely notice that she extended her arm far away from her toward the screen, an exaggerated movement that vividly reinforces the idea of distance between herself and the employee. This depiction also reinforces the notion that the employee was not willing to accommodate her as a Deaf person, which is a theme that runs across the entire narrative.
Clip 5 – After more confusion and more gesturing, Renca shows what strategies she was using to try to get the employee to find the one item she needed which led to the employees calling a third person to “help”.
Clip 6 – The last two clips showcase her evaluation of the experience being masked and muted. By this point in the narrative, it is clear that Renca’s frustration has peaked and she has started to feel anxious. The interaction with this employee has not gone the way she wanted, there has been a complete breakdown in communication. The worst part is that she does not know how to solve this problem despite multiple attempts and failures. The mask is a significant barrier. She goes on to describe more details about how the interaction transpired then, as she begins to wrap up the narrative, she expresses an extraordinarily powerful depiction of the mask as a metaphorical barrier for her as well. Essentially, she’s saying that part of her language had been ripped away from her face. Interestingly, Deaf people commonly associate their language with their hands and facial expressions but it is frequently the case that the mouth, in particular, is the realm of hearing people. But here, Renca gives a very powerful message about the importance of the lower half of the face to sign language but also to those deaf-hearing interactions that she’s depicting here. Renca makes this observation herself just after this clip.
Clip 7 – In this last clip, we see from Renca’s vantage point what it looked like to try to understand these hearing employees just by “reading” the information from their eyes. When she moves her right hand over her masked mouth, she is depicting the experience of not having access to the information presumably being expressed on the employee’s mouth. That experience was overwhelming, frustrating, and oppressive as a Deaf person facing the hearing world during Covid.
Narrative Clause Structure
In this image, the five components of narrative clauses line the bottom (Labov & Waletzky 1967). Across the arc shape, you will see the number of times the two “mask” forms emerged based on clause type: MASKh is in the gray boxes and DS_b(mask) is in the purplish-red boxes. Once we had a full understanding of the trajectory of the narrative, we analyzed where these signs emerged with respect to their position in the narrative clause structure. What we found was rather interesting – the sign DS_b(mask) was used most frequently during complicating action sequences meaning the moments when she was depicting her experience as if it were happening in the present moment. As you can see in the middle of the slide, there were far more instances of DS_b(mask) in the complicating action and evaluation clauses. MASKh was used throughout the narrative but it was less prevalent during the complicating action sequences. It’s worth noting that when it did arise in a CA clause, it occurred immediately prior to the sign DS_b(mask) which suggests the signer was using a conventionalized sign to signal the concept ‘mask’ before depicting it with this innovated form. We found this to be a compelling example of how the signer mixed conventionalized signs with innovations that seem to be sensitive to their place within a narrative structure.
To summarize, we analyzed two forms, MASKh and DS_b(mask) as conventionalized and novel forms that were used throughout the narrative. Depiction figured prominently in the narrative as it is a required component of expression in ASL. The phonological form of the sign for MASKh which iconically foregrounds the loops of a mask but renders invisible the part of the mask that blocks the mouth. The phonology of that form was simply insufficient for this narrative where the point was to highlight the inability to access information expressed on the lips. This required a linguistic innovation and the result is not random. By holding her hand over her mouth, Renca provides a crystal clear visual representation for the viewers who easily can imagine what the scene looked like.
Bonus Content
We didn’t have time to include the above in our presentation but wanted to mention two things about our narrative.
First, it’s rather striking how one way Renca depicts the mask – specifically putting on the mask on the ears – resembles the ASL sign for “hearing aid”, which is yet another element of navigating hearing spaces.
Second, Renca’s narrative, like many of the O5S5ASL videos collected over Zoom or submitted by participants themselves, contain several instances of #EmboxedDiscourse, which is a play on the concept of “embodied discourse” in which language users are face-to-face and able to fully employ visible semiotic resources to co-construct conversations (Streeck, Goodwin & LeBaron 2000; Shaw 2019).
Conclusion
In this presentation, we’ve taken a close look at an ordinary narrative of a typical deaf experience during the pandemic but rather extraordinary in the telling, with its beautiful weaving of existing lexical resources with novel depiction. Depiction allows the narrator to convey more than the somewhat-limiting conventional signs do (for example, she holds her hand over her mouth for 3 seconds while she produces signs on her other hand to show the interaction between her and the worker). Renca is clearly a skilled storyteller but this is a spontaneous telling. It is her first time telling this story but it doesn’t take much thought for her to make use of discourse strategies.
The experience of going out in public for the first time during Covid was memorable for most of us and likely frustrating to some extent. Renca’s experience, however, was far more dramatic. The use of depiction in this instance displayed a metaphorical removal of part of her language. In sum, this was an extraordinarily powerful rendition of an ordinary experience during Covid days.
References
Clark, H.H. (2016). Depicting as a method of communication. Psychological Review, 123(3), 324-347. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000026
Dudis, P. (2011). The body in scene depictions. In C. B. Roy (Ed.), Discourse in Signed Languages (pp. 3–66). Gallaudet University Press.
Dunn, R. (2021). 211201_O5S5_N_RD. From O5S5ASL. YouTube. Uploaded by Julie Hochgesang, 2023. https://youtu.be/GOBih7XZtGU, From O5S5ASL. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16983517.v2
Ferrara, L., & Hodge, G. (2018). Language as Description, Indication, and Depiction. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 716. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00716
Hochgesang, J. (2022). SLAASh ID Glossing Principles, ASL Signbank and Annotation Conventions, Version 3.2 (Version 4). figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12003732.v4
Labov, W. & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis. In J.Helm (ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts, 12-44. University of Washington Press.
Schiffrin, D. (1996). Narrative as self-portrait: Sociolinguistic constructions of identity. Language in Society, 25(2): 167-203. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4168695
Shaw, E. (2019). Gesture in multiparty interaction. Gallaudet University Press.Streeck, J. Goodwin, C. & LeBaron, C. Embodied interaction in the material world: An Introduction. (2011) In Streeck, J., Goodwin, C., & LeBaron, C. (Eds.), Embodied interaction: Language and body in the material world (pp. 1-26). Cambridge University Press.
#EmboxedDiscourse – https://x.com/jahochcam/status/1298028954788528128
Wittenburg, P., Brugman, H., Russel, A., Klassmann, A., Sloetjes, H. (2006). ELAN: a Professional Framework for Multimodality Research. In: Proceedings of LREC 2006, Fifth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation.