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The American Sign Language (ASL) fingerspelled alphabet is often a starting point for novice sign learners. The twenty-six handshapes of the alphabet are typically compiled into visual pedagogical materials designed to help learners master this cornerstone of sign learning. Second-language sign learners often make mistakes in their signing that are related to the fact that signs are visual symbols which thus appear differently depending on one's perspective. In this study, we analyzed fifty-two commonly available representations of the ASL alphabet to determine the degree of variability exhibited among these materials for general characteristics, such as the medium employed (photographs, digital illustrations, or hand drawings), inclusion of alphabet graphemes and/or object images, and representations of diversity, as well as five parameters related to perspective-taking: perspective on the sign (signer/addressee), angle of hand (0, 45, or 90 degrees), directionality of hand (facing left, right, or front), hand selection (left or right hand), and depiction of movement. We discovered a high degree of variability in the way that ASL handshapes are represented pictorially, with most of the letters of the alphabet exhibiting either moderate or high variability in the perspectives, angles, and directionalities of the hand portrayed. We conclude that there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the way that the ASL finger-spelling alphabet is represented in didactic materials, and we suggest ways that educators and publishers can improve their teaching materials by incorporating multiple visual perspectives.
Abstract
The American Sign Language (ASL) fingerspelled alphabet is often a starting point for novice sign learners. The twenty-six handshapes of the alphabet are typically compiled into visual pedagogical materials designed to help learners master this cornerstone of sign learning. Second-language sign learners often make mistakes in their signing that are related to the fact that signs are visual symbols which thus appear differently depending on one's perspective. In this study, we analyzed fifty-two commonly available representations of the ASL alphabet to determine the degree of variability exhibited among these materials for general characteristics, such as the medium employed (photographs, digital illustrations, or hand drawings), inclusion of alphabet graphemes and/or object images, and representations of diversity, as well as five parameters related to perspective-taking: perspective on the sign (signer/addressee), angle of hand (0, 45, or 90 degrees), directionality of hand (facing left, right, or front), hand selection (left or right hand), and depiction of movement. We discovered a high degree of variability in the way that ASL handshapes are represented pictorially, with most of the letters of the alphabet exhibiting either moderate or high variability in the perspectives, angles, and directionalities of the hand portrayed. We conclude that there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the way that the ASL finger-spelling alphabet is represented in didactic materials, and we suggest ways that educators and publishers can improve their teaching materials by incorporating multiple visual perspectives.
In 2019, the Deaf visual artist Christine Sun Kim produced a series of three drawings: Alphabet from the Speller's Point of View, Alphabet from a Bird's Point of View, and Alphabet from a Lurker's Point of View (Krukowski 2020). In each of these charcoal-and-oil pastel drawings, Kim presented the viewer with distinct renditions of the fingerspelled American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet, while drawing attention to the different ways that the handshapes can appear depending on one's perspective. The three large square (49.5 inch × 49.5 inch) drawings illustrate how the fingerspelled letters appear from the perspectives of a signer, a drone, and an onlooker, respectively. In addition to the various social, cultural, and artistic issues that the artist may have been commenting on (Who is being signed to? Who is included/excluded? Who is witnessing/surveilling the signing? ), Kim focused on a curious but oft-overlooked challenge inherent to sign language acquisition: Signs appear differently depending on the perspective from which they are viewed. Manual signs are themselves visual linguistic symbols; unlike spoken words, the perception of such symbols varies depending on the spatial configuration between signer and addressee. This modality difference between sign and speech has important consequences for learners of signed languages. As Meier (2016, 7) commented:
The appearance of a sign can vary greatly as a function of the individual's perspective on that sign: the problem [. . .] is that [sign learners] must learn to produce the signs as they appear from the signer's perspective, not from their perspective as the addressees.
Thus, unlike for spoken languages, sign learners must adapt to recognize varying percepts of the same sign, viewed from different visual perspectives, normalize all such percepts into an abstracted phonological form, and finally produce the form-not as it was viewed, but rather as it was originally produced by the signer. For babies learning spoken languages, a loose analogy could be made with the challenge of identifying underlying phonemes despite acoustic variability in the speech signal across different speakers due to differences in vocal tract size. Hearing babies show evidence of this ability, known as talker normalization, by the age of six months (Kuhl 1979).
Only in sign, however, is the linguistic signal produced visually in three-dimensional space. This fact has implications for various aspects of linguistic structure. Perhaps the most illustrative example of this is the way that signed languages differ from spoken languages in the way that spatial information is conveyed. In spoken languages, spatial information (say, for example, about the configuration of objects in an environment) is communicated via lexical items (e.g., in English, through the use of prepositions such as in and on). In signed languages, however, in which space is the medium for communication, signers take advantage of the signing space to create visual depictions of spatial layouts; such configurations are typically produced from the signer's perspective (for nonpresent referents) or take advantage of shared space (for present referents; Emmorey and Tversky 2002). To understand the spatial layout being described, addressees must adopt the perspective of the signer, which often involves a change or even reversal from their own visual perspective. The three-dimensional, visual nature of signed languages led Shield and Meier (2018) to identify four possible strategies for imitating signs that are available for sign learners. Sign learners may choose the anatomical strategy, which activates the same muscles as the signing model, the mirroring strategy, in which the sign learner produces a mirror image of the signs that they see, the visual-matching strategy, in which the sign learner produces signs as they appear from their perspective, or the reversing strategy, in which the sign learner reproduces the sign to match the perspective taken by the model. Each of the first three strategies leads to various kinds of phonological errors, so all sign learners must eventually learn to use the reversing strategy.
There is evidence that novice sign learners and atypical learners have difficulty adopting the reversing strategy and produce phonological errors in their signing as a result. In his study of second-language (L2) adult learners of ASL, Rosen (2004) documented that sign learners make certain errors in their signing that appeared to be rooted in "the physical stance from which the learner views the input source such as the teacher" that occur "when signers either mirror or make parallel their signs with those of the teacher" (38). Such perceptual errors, which Rosen called "mirrorization" and "parallelization," respectively, could then lead to a situation wherein "signers may reverse the handshape, location of contacts, direction of movements, and the orientation of palms within lexical signs as compared to their teacher" (2004, 38). Rosen rightly explains that these errors are perceptual in nature rather than articulatory, as they reflect the difficulty of reproducing signs as originally produced by the teacher. In Shield and Meier's (2018) terms, then, L2 adult learners of ASL appear to adopt the mirroring strategy while learning ASL, and only through extensive exposure to ASL do they eventually learn to adopt the reversing strategy. Relatedly, Emmorey, Bosworth, and Kraljic (2009) have suggested that signers may be distracted by the mismatch between their perspective on their own hands and the hands of interlocutors, and that signers may instead rely more heavily on proprioceptive and kinesthetic feedback while signing for self-monitoring and self-correcting rather than the visual feedback available to them through their peripheral vision.
Signers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), too, show difficulty adopting the reversing strategy. Shield and colleagues (Shield et al. 2020; Shield, Igel, and Meier 2022; Shield and Meier 2012) demonstrated that some autistic signers, both deaf and hearing, reverse the direction of their palm while signing, which shows evidence of the visual-matching strategy. In the first report of the phenomenon, Shield and Meier (2012) studied five native-signing children diagnosed with ASD, between ages 4 and 8, with Deaf parents. In this study, three children produced spontaneous palm reversals on lexical signs and fingerspelled letters during naturalistic interaction and an elicited fingerspelling task (e.g., with palm facing toward the signer's body rather than outward toward an interlocutor). Such palm reversals were not produced by a control group of nonautistic Deaf children similar in age, nor have such errors been reported in the literature of typical sign acquisition. Later, Shield et al. (2020) published a longitudinal case study of a native signer with ASD over the span of 10 years (from age 4 years, 11 months to 14 years, 11 months). While the child's signing improved consistently in terms of handshape, location, and movement over the course of the study, the reversal rate in palm orientation remained high, reaching over 50 percent of all signs produced at age 14 years, 11 months. The authors concluded that difficulty with perspective-taking had likely resulted in this child's persistent palm reversals into adolescence.
In sum, signs, unlike spoken words, appear differently from different perspectives, and this fact leads to challenges for language acquisition, especially for L2 learners and atypical learners, such as autistic children.
Learning the ASL fingerspelling alphabet is an important part of the acquisition of ASL (Brentari and Padden 2001; Padden 1998). It enables learners to represent proper names and lexical items for which a conventional sign does not exist or for words that have not yet been lexicalized (Battison 1978). Each letter of the written English alphabet is represented by a single, one-handed handshape (with a particular palm orientation and with or without movement); these handshapes are strung together to form signed analogs of written English words (see figure 1). Scholars have estimated that approximately 10-20 percent of ASL discourse is fingerspelled, depending on the signer (Padden and Clark Gunsauls 2003). Fingerspelled words in ASL discourse are typically produced rapidly, with reduced articulation of each individual handshape, especially across repeated mentions within a conversation (Lepic 2019). Indeed, it has been suggested that expert signers do not process handshapes in a fingerspelled word individually but rather process the shape of the entire fingerspelled word as a chunk, relying more heavily on the movement transitions between handshapes for information rather than the handshapes themselves (Wilcox 1992). But novice signers struggle to glean meaningful information from movement transitions, focusing instead on identifying static handshapes (Geer and Keane 2014). Indeed, research has also shown that the production and comprehension of rapidly fingerspelled words can be one of the most formidable challenges facing ASL learners (Quinto-Pozos 2011; Wilcox 1992), and explicit phonetic instruction about transitions, holds, and phonetic variants of handshapes has been shown to significantly aid L2 learners in their fingerspelling comprehension (Geer and Keane 2017).
Learning the alphabet is often seen as a first step in ASL acquisition. As such, there are many pictorial representations of the alphabet designed to be used as pedagogical aids. In choosing how to represent the ASL fingerspelling alphabet, creators of such materials face a number of choices. First, they must decide whether to take photographs of the handshapes or to draw/illustrate them. Relatedly, in depicting human hands, choices must be made about the race/color/ethnicity of the skin being shown. Second, a choice must be made as to which hand to represent, as right-handed signers typically fingerspell with their right hand and left-handed signers with their left hand. Although ASL makes no distinction with regard to hand dominance, approximately 90 percent of the general population is right-handed (Corballis 1980, 1992); this proportion holds for the deaf, signing population as well (Bonvillian, Orlansky, and Garland 1982; Conrad 1979; Papadatou-Pastou and Sáfár 2016; Sharma 2014). Third, authors must decide which perspective on the handshape they wish to show to the viewer. Since many handshapes are similar, they will presumably want to show the salient parts of the handshape that maximize contrast with other handshapes. For example, the handshapes for A and S contrast primarily by thumb placement (figure 2); thus, any illustration of these two handshapes must make clear where the thumb is placed. In order to do so, it would appear to be preferable to show the handshapes from an addressee's perspective rather than the signer's so as to make the thumb's placement maximally perceptible. A fourth issue is the angle of the hand with respect to the viewer: Even if handshapes are shown from the same perspective (i.e., the signer's or the addressee's), they may be shown at different angles. All of these choices are embedded in pedagogical materials for ASL learners but have not, to our knowledge, been fully examined or considered in light of the variety of possibilities that exist for the representation of three-dimensional visual symbols.
In this article, we ask if there is variability in the pictorial representation of the ASL alphabet, and if so, what this variability tells us about the difficulty of teaching and learning the ASL alphabet in particular and signed languages more generally. We do so by analyzing a large sample of ASL alphabet representations.
Method
Data Collection
We collected pictorial representations of the ASL alphabet through a Google Images search using the following search terms: (American Sign Language OR ASL) AND (Alphabet OR ABCs). For the purposes of convenience, we included the first fifty-two image results, not including duplicates. For a list of the alphabet representations analyzed, see the appendix.
Data Coding
First, we coded each alphabet for general characteristics. These included the medium employed (photographs, digital illustrations, or hand drawings), the inclusion of Roman alphabet graphemes and/or object images, and representations of diversity.
Each letter of the alphabet was then coded for five separate parameters: perspective on the sign, angle of hand, directionality of hand, hand selection,1 and depiction of movement.
(1) Perspective: Signs were coded as being represented from one of two perspectives: Signer or Addressee. If the sign was represented as it would appear from the perspective of the signer, it was coded as Signer; if represented as it would appear from the perspective of the addressee, it was coded as Addressee; see figure 3.
(2) Angle of Hand: Signs were coded as appearing at a 0-degree angle if the direction of the hand, wrist, and forearm faced directly forward. Signs were coded at a 45-degree angle if the direction of the fingers, wrist, and forearm faced 45 degrees to either side and coded at a 90-degree angle if the direction of the fingers, wrist, and forearm faced to either the right or left side; see figure 4.
(3) Directionality of Hand: Signs were coded as facing to the left, facing forward, or facing to the right; see figure 5. Note that both left-and right-facing handshapes would be coded as 90-degree angles under parameter 2 above for angle of hand; thus, we coded for directionality of hand in order to distinguish between right-and left-facing representations.
(4) Hand Selection: Signs were coded as representing a right-or left-handed sign model; see figure 6.2
(5) Depiction of Movement: For the letters J and Z, movements were coded as being depicted using arrows, lines, or multiple images.
Reliability
A second coder trained on the coding system coded all of the repre sentations of handshapes, and these codes were compared to the first coder (the second author) to establish the reliability of the coding system. Interrater agreement exceeded 95 percent for all parameters (perspective: agreement = 99 percent; angle of hand: agreement = 96 percent; directionality of hand: agreement = 98 percent; hand selection: agreement = 99 percent); and depiction of movement: agree ment = 100 percent.
Results
A total of 1,352 fingerspelled letters were coded (fifty-two alpha-bets, each containing twenty-six letters). We conducted two primary analyses: (1) an intra-alphabet analysis, in which we looked at each alphabet as a whole and analyzed whether each alphabet contained variability within it in terms of the variables under examination; and (2) an inter-alphabet analysis, in which we looked across the entire sample of alphabets and analyzed how each letter was represented in the sample.
General Characteristics
Of the fifty-two alphabets we analyzed, twenty-seven consisted of photographed images of hands, fourteen were digital illustrations, and eleven were hand drawings. Forty-two of the representations included Roman alphabet graphemes along with the corresponding handshape. Of these, twenty-six represented the graphemes in uppercase, three represented the graphemes in lowercase, and thirteen included both upper and lowercase graphemes. Just one representation also included pictures of objects (e.g., a picture of an apple to correspond to the grapheme A and the ASL handshape for A). Forty-six of the fifty-two representations showed human hands, while six of the representations included nonhuman hands (e.g., robot hands or animal paws). Of the forty-six human portrayals, all but two were uniformly Caucasian. The other two representations included non-white models or hands of models from various races.
Perspective
The great majority of handshapes-1,111 of 1,352 (82.2 percent)- were portrayed from the addressee's perspective, while 241 handshapes (17.8 percent) were portrayed from the signer's perspective. Within the alphabets, nine of fifty-two (17.3 percent) represented all twenty-six handshapes from the addressee's perspective, and fifty of fifty-two (96.1 percent) represented most of the handshapes from the addressee's perspective. The handshapes that were primarily shown from the signer's perspective were G, H, P, and Q, while O, C, K, D, X, and J all showed significant variation in perspective; see table 1.
Different letters of the alphabet varied greatly on this variable. We distinguished between low-variability letters (>90 percent from the same perspective), moderate-variability letters (80-90 percent from the same perspective, and high-variability letters (<80 percent from the same perspective); see table 1.
Angle of Hand
Eight hundred and twenty-one handshapes (60.7 percent) were shown at a 0-degree angle, 194 handshapes (14.3 percent) were shown at a 45-degree angle, and 337 handshapes (24.9 percent) were shown at a 90-degree angle. Most of the alphabets (forty-nine of fifty-two) relied primarily on a 0-degree angle, while the other three alphabets mainly portrayed handshapes from a 90-degree angle.
Like with the perspective parameter, we categorized individual letters in accordance with the variability that they exhibited. We distinguished between low-variability letters (>90 percent from the same angle), moderate-variability letters (80-90 percent from the same angle, and high-variability letters (<80 percent from the same angle); see table 2.
Directionality of Hand
Seven hundred and ninety-three of 1,352 handshapes (58.7 percent) faced forward, 347 handshapes (25.7 percent) faced to the left, and 212 handshapes (15.7 percent) faced to the right. Most of the alphabets primarily portrayed forward-facing handshapes (forty-four of fifty-two alphabets), while six alphabets primarily showed left-facing handshapes and two alphabets primarily showed right-facing handshapes.
As with the angle of hand and perspective parameters, we categorized individual letters in accordance with the variability that they exhibited. We distinguished between low-variability letters (>90 percent facing the same direction), moderate-variability letters (80-90 percent facing the same direction, and high-variability letters (<80 percent facing the same direction); see table 3.
Hand Selection
One thousand three hundred and twenty-three of 1,352 handshapes (97.9 percent) represented a right-handed sign model; only twentynine handshapes (2.1 percent) represented a left-handed sign model. All but three of the alphabets represented all handshapes with the right hand. One alphabet (LPettet) represented all handshapes with the left hand except for D and G, which were represented with the right hand. One alphabet (Signing Bee) represented all handshapes with the right hand except for G, H, P, and Q, which were represented with the left hand. Finally, one alphabet (Able 2 Learn Inc.) represented all handshapes with the right hand except for P, which was represented with the left hand.
Depiction of Movement
Two handshapes, J and Z, contain path movements as part of the articulation of the fingerspelled letter. We found that movement was most commonly portrayed through the use of drawn arrows or lines (forty-six of fifty-two alphabets), while six of the alphabets employed multiple images to convey the idea of movement.
Discussion
We conducted an analysis of the variability in the representation of the handshapes of the ASL alphabet, as exhibited by pictorial representa-tions of the alphabet used in didactic materials. We were motivated to do so because of the variability of perspectives inherent to signed languages and asked if there was evidence of this heterogeneity in the way that the ASL fingerspelling alphabet is represented in such materials.
The analysis leaves no doubt that there is a high degree of variability in the way that ASL handshapes are represented pictorially. While some of the handshapes are represented nearly universally in the same way (e.g., L, A, E, Y, S, and B all showed low variability for the five parameters coded), not a single handshape was represented uniformly across the fifty-two alphabets in our sample. Indeed, most of the letters of the alphabet exhibited either moderate or high variability in the perspective (signer/addressee), angle of hand (0, 45, or 90 degrees), and directionality of the hand (left, right, front) portrayed. This finding leads us to conclude that there is a great deal of hetereogeneity in the way that the ASL fingerspelling alphabet is represented pictorially in didactic materials.
This finding is not, in itself, necessarily a critical problem for ASL pedagogy. However, we draw attention to it because we believe that this issue has thus far been largely ignored in the literature. Furthermore, there is evidence that variability in perspectives on signs does pose challenges for sign learners, as Rosen (2004) documented for L2 signers and Shield and colleagues (Shield and Meier 2012; Shield and Meier 2018; Shield et al. 2020) showed for atypical signers.
As to why some handshapes are susceptible to greater variability than others, it is likely that the phonological characteristics of specific handshapes are responsible. For example, G, H, P, and Q differ from the rest of the handshapes of the ASL alphabet in that the orientation of the palm faces inward facing the signer's body (as in G and H) or downward (as in P and Q). The inward-facing palm on G and H and downward-facing palm on P and Q are likely responsible for the majority of representations of these letters being shown from the signer's perspective rather than the addressee's, unlike for the vast majority of other letters. Unsurprisingly, all other letters were portrayed the majority of the time from the addressee's perspective rather than the signer's. This finding makes sense in that learners of ASL must learn to recognize signs as others produce them, so portraying the handshapes as they appear from the addressee's perspective is a logical choice.
Other signs may have been susceptible to variability in representation to make them more perceptually salient to learners. Although most representations in our sample exhibited a head-on, 0-degree angle, some handshapes are easier to perceive if viewed at an angle (either 45 or 90 degrees), since a head-on perspective would not permit the learner to view all salient features of some handshapes. This appears to be the case for G, H, P, Q, O, C, J, and X, which were rarely shown head-on.
There was one notable exception to the heterogeneity of the alphabets analyzed, however: The racial composition of the hands portrayed. Nearly all (forty-four of forty-six) of the alphabets that showed human hands were uniformly Caucasian, while just two representations included non-white models.
Although we do not fault the producers of the representations of the ASL fingerspelling alphabet for the choices they have made, our study suggests that improvements can be made to future representations of the ASL alphabet. One possible improvement to consider is to include multiple images of each handshape on ASL fingerspelling charts, showing both the signer's and the addressee's perspective. Only one of the alphabets that we analyzed included multiple perspectives on the same handshape-and then only for a few of the letters (G, H, K, P, and Q). Another possibility is to represent the handshape as it is produced by right-and left-handed signers. It is not hard to imagine a chart with multiple representations for each letter, given how English letters are often taught using charts that show each letter in variable forms (e.g., uppercase and lowercase; print and cursive). Such improvements would cue learners to the variability inherent in ASL exposure and could facilitate acquisition of the ASL alphabet. It would also be appropriate to be more inclusive and representative of human diversity in a multiracial, multiethnic society such as the United States.
Conclusion
Unlike the vocal-auditory linguistic symbols of spoken languages, manual signs are perceived visually. As such, they appear differently depending on the angle from which they are viewed, which presents a potential problem for sign language learners. There is evidence of this modality difference in the variability exhibited by the pictorial representations of the ASL fingerspelling alphabet. We suggest that future representations of the ASL alphabet (or indeed the alphabets of other signed languages) include multiple perspectives and angles to help learners recognize how signs may appear from different perspectives. More broadly, it is important for ASL instructors, sign language linguists, and others who are interested in ASL and sign language pedagogy to recognize diverse perspectives as a fundamental characteristic inherent to signed languages: a unique, modality-specific quality that brings with it special challenges and unique opportunities.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank M. Rossero for help with coding and reliability. Figures 2-6 are original illustrations created by the second author. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Aaron Shield, [email protected].
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Notes
1. If multiple images were included for any given letter (such as a main image with a smaller inset), only the main image was coded.
2. Note that it was not possible for us to discern if a true left-handed model was being used or if an image of a right-handed model had been digitally flipped.
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