Good evening dear fellow toastmasters and welcomed guests. Nice to meet you! My name is Rxx. Today I want to share and let you know about American Sign Language (ASL). Are you ready?
Sign language, as its name indicates, is the language used by people who may have hearing problems. How does it work? Let’s imagine that we are now living in a world without sound. How are we going to communicate without using our voice? If you think about it, well, it is actually not anything new to us. Without even being aware of it, we all communicate in various ways other than talking, all the time. Those include literal methods such as handwriting or text messaging, as well as other approaches such as our gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions. By saying that, I’m already mentioning 3 key components of sign language: gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions.
Gestures are no doubt the most visible part of sign language. A sign language is associated with some existing language, such as English for ASL. Words in English get translated to gestures in ASL. Though gestures in ASL are tied to words in English in a way, ASL has its own grammar to use them. I’ll give you an example: today, morning, at home, me and mom, eat, did, pancake, milk. I just signed “My mom and I ate pancakes and milk at home this morning”. As you can see, rather than forming a sentence in English, ASL is very much like painting. I used all those gestures to “paint the picture” as a way to “speak”. You may ask, what if I want to sign something that cannot be “painted”, such as a name? We can use finger spelling in that situation to be very specific on a word. Like what I did at the beginning: R-X-X, that’s my name.
Eye contact is very VERY important in sign language. It is already very important in spoken languages, as it shows our focus in the conversation. How do you feel if I don’t look at you when we are talking to each other? It doesn’t seem nice, right? In sign language, failing to maintain eye contact could be even worse. If I’m not looking at you when we are signing, it means “I’m not listening to you at all”, without any excuse. Maintaining eye contact is not only a basic manner of politeness, but also the prerequisite for the conversation to happen in sign language.
We use facial expressions and acting to channel emotional context in the communication for spoken languages. That applies to sign language too, and is more essential as it contributes to the accuracy of the emotional “color” of what we are trying to “paint” in our statement. For example, I cannot sign “angry” by signing with a happy face, which could be very confusing for the audience to get what’s going on. This gesture of “angry” has to be combined with an ANGRY face to show what I actually mean.
Last but not least, I want to share a bit on the motivation behind the topic. It is said that learning a language also means acquiring a new perspective on life, a gateway to a different part of the world. I found it very true. Sign language becomes the bridge between me and some people that I didn’t care much about before. And also by learning sign language, I am empowered to become the bridge for others in case of need. It expands my life for the better, and helps me to make the world a better place for everybody to live. I would call something like this a grace and good deed, that we could all try. :)
(Note: the speech needs to be delivered along with signing in ASL as much as the speaker could possibly do.)