Identifying Recurring Depiction in ASL Presentations

By using depiction, language users are able to provide information about what an entity or event is like, what it looks like, or even what it acts like. When giving a presentation, signers may use and reuse instances of depiction and may switch from one instance to another. In an examination of 160 minutes of video of American Sign Language (ASL) presentations, the presenters averaged twenty instances of depiction (of varying lengths) per minute. The high occurrence of depiction in these ASL presentations suggests that it is necessary to be able to recognize depiction in ASL discourse.

In this article I introduce the term depiction as it relates to ASL, provide examples, and report on changes that aid in identifying depiction, particularly recurring depiction, in ASL presentations. I describe my analysis of the nonmanual changes (e.g., change in direction of eye gaze) that occur just prior to and at the onset of depiction and also discuss manual changes.