In class recently, a very observant classmate noticed that I was doing my ordinals with my non-dominant hand. I have probably been doing this for three years and no-one had ever noticed, including me! Ordinals are when you say something like, 'There are five things to remember: number one (blah blah blah) and number two (blah blah blah), and so on. In Auslan you generally tell your audience how many things are in the list first and then you count through from number one to, say five in this instance, interspersing the counting through the list with each piece of information, as above. In Auslan, ordinals are indicated by signs involving pointing with your dominant hand to the finger on the non-dominant hand that indicates which number thing in the list you are up to. (I will perhaps upload a video link of this later to illustrate).
Anyway, I am a right-hander and I have, all this time, been pointing with my left hand and indicating the list number on my right hand. This feels more natural to me and it's going to take a bit of effort to change. Having said that, doing this the 'wrong' way does not impede meaning, but does interrupt the flow of the person reading my signing because it's a pattern they don't expect.
This has made me ponder a little on the subject of handedness. Our class seems divided between those who notice whether a signer is left or right handed and those who don't. We have plenty of exposure to both, as one of our classmates is left-handed and several videos we have watched feature left-handers. I am one of the people who does not notice handedness. Interestingly, the person who noticed my handedness inconsistency, is someone who notices whether someone is left- or right-hand dominant. She says that left-handedness, being less common, gives her some trouble in reading Auslan until she consciously realises that she is watching a left-hander, and then it ceases to be a problem. I find this anecdotal fascinating and wonder if it is evidence that not everyone processes this visual information in the same way. It would be really cool to do some FRMI scanning of brains to detect differences in activity between people who notice handedness and those who don't.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteYes I too noticed that those Auslan users who DO noticed these things that you are talking about, I find they are themselves what I termed "native" signers. What I mean by this is that signing people who learnt or started signing, either naturally as a youngster or started very young through schooling and that they predominately communicated in Auslan throughout their childhoods and beyond...then they are more often than not are sensitive to your so called signing handedness.
Further to this self observations of mine, I noticed too that those who teaches Auslan and they themselves who are not "native" signers, often do not mind such handedness, unless they were oblivious to such anecdotal.
Like you said Rachel, I too find it fascinating indeed. :)