The Transparency of Meaning of Sign Language Gestures

THE TRANSPARENCY OF MEANING OF SIGN LANGUAGE GESTURES* Harry W.Hoemann Breger (1970) has presented evidence that the meaning of 30 signs from the American Sign Language lexicon is transparent to persons with no prior experience with the language. In a 30-item multiple choice test administered live by a deaf person, 31 of Breger's 35 Ss made correct responses in more than half the trials, and all but four of the items were correctly identified at better than chance levels. These results might have both theoretical and practical implications, if confirmed. On a theoretical level, Breger's findings suggest that the trend from iconic to "formal" signs described by Tervoort (1961) has not proceeded very far from the signs' original motivations. They suggest, further, that historical trends in the formation of signs described by Bellugi and Klima (in press) have left the imitative, ideographic component of the signs fairly well intact. Breger's results have practical significance, since the opinion has sometimes been expressed that the ideographic lexicon of American Sign Language makes it an inferior language (Myklebust, 1964). This opinion may have to be revised, since there is evidence from translations into and out of Sign Language that Sign is able to preserve all of the meanings and nuances of an original text in English (Hoemann & Tweney 1973, Tweney & Hoemann 1973). On the other hand, if the meaning of signs is relatively transparent even to persons unfamiliar with the language, Myklebust's reservations may need to be taken seriously. Breger's results, however, must be viewed with considerable caution, since the difficulty level of a multiple choice test is affected by the test composer's selection of incorrect alternatives for each item. From the one example presented in Breger's paper and from the "most frequent errors" reported, it appears that almost all of the incorrect alternatives for each item appeared elsewhere in the test as response choices for other stimulus *Acknowletgpment. This investigation was supported by N.I.H. Research Grant NS-09590-04 from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke. The cooperation of Bowling Green State University students and the contribution of Ms. Elizabeth Moore in the conduct of this study is gratefully acknowledged. Sign Language Studies 7 signs to be identified. No explanation is given for constructing the test in this manner. Moreover, there is reason to question whether the thirty items used in Breger's test are representative of the Sign Language lexicon. Three of the items are socially restricted (breast, penis, feces). While socially restricted signs are present in American Sign Language, they do not comprise ten percent of the lexicon. Again, no explanation is given for the manner in which stimulus items were chosen for the test. In view of the questionable methods used by Breger to assess the transparency of meaning of signs and in view of the theoretical and practical implications that such findings might have for evaluating the American Sign Language as a communicative channel, a replication was conducted which sought to overcome the major limitations of the Breger study and to quantify more precisely the extent to which the meaning of the American Sign Language lexicon is transparent to persons who have had no experience with the language. Method. Fifty-two undergraduate students at Bowling Green State University were recruited from courses which required participation as Ss in psychological experiments. The sex division was approximately equal. None had any prior knowledge of Sign Language. One hundred Sign Language gestures were drawn randomly from a deck of 500 sign language flash cards (Hoemann & Hoemann 1973). Although there is no way to verify whether the 500 items in the deck are the most frequently used signs in American Sign Language, the contents of the deck are very similar to the contents of other published dictionaries of Sign Language (for example, O'Rourke 1973). The Ss were tested anonymously in small groups of six to twelve Ss in sessions lasting about 25 minutes. They were informed that they would see examples of signs from the American Sign Language of the Deaf. They were told that the meaning of some signs may be guessed from the manner in which...