The Embodiment of Black Nonverbal Communication in Black ASL
Introduction
Many scholars outside of signed language linguistics, also recognized the importance of nonverbal communication through our interpersonal discourse. Understanding the importance of nonmanual markers in the use of American Sign Language hold the key to understanding the paralinguistic features of Black American Sign Language. Noticeably, the prosodic markers in Black American Sign Language have not been researched thoroughly. Sherman Wilcox (1995) discussed the classes of articulators in his stated nonmanual articulators in Modality in American Sign Language paper. First, nonmanual articulators, particularly facial gestures, are used predominantly to code grammatical functions such as topic, interrogatives, and imperative. Nonmanual articulators rarely if ever are used to produce lexical morphemes (Wilcox, 1995, p.4).
The prosodic markers are important parts of analyzing the pragmatic functions of American Sign Language. Linguistic and gestural descriptions of non-manual markers refer to aspects such as position, movement, tension, aperture, and duration of the musculature of the face, the head, and the body (Brentari et al, 2018, p.2). Non-manual markers can also affect phrasal and sentence meaning and spread over larger prosodic domains such as phonological and intonational phrases (Brentari et al, 2018, p.2).
My initial hypothesis is that Black Deaf signers consciously or unconsciously embodied the nonverbal communication system that develops in Black communities and expresses through Black American Sign Language. My research questions are the following: (1) How do the Black signers express nonverbal communication that symbolizes African American identity and culture. (2) Is there a relationship between the high sonority movement and the Black nonverbal communication system commonly used in Black communities?
Literature Review
In the Black ASL Project book, McCaskill (2011) stated younger participants demonstrated their perception of the Black signing style by shifting their bodies markedly to one side, exaggerating the movement, and expanding the size of the signing space (McCaskill et al, 2011, p.134). Dr. McCaskill recognized the indexation of their Black identities through their nonverbal communication patterns connected to their language use. I reviewed both the Black ASL Project and Signing Black in America documentaries and I noticed that many participants made similar remarks about the importance of including nonverbal communications that nod to the Black communities. On YouTube, Chapter 9 of the Black ASL Project displayed a mosaic chart of their resultative findings on the structure of Black ASL.
Code-switching is one of the common themes in Black ASL Project and Signing Black in America documentaries. Worthy, Lavigne, and Romero expanded the initial definition of code-switching is that “code-switching can also refer to the multicultural individuals using more than one language in conversation or other communicative acts (e.gs., gestures, body language, and understood contexts). Code-switching discussion in both documentaries should be represented as an indicator of African American features that the participants had to camouflage to assimilate into mainstream society, especially their daily interaction with white signers. According to Spears, the specialized meanings of camouflaged features tend to be undetected because of their superficial resemblance to grammatical constructions found in mainstream varieties (Weldon, 2021, p.134).
In The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL DVD Companion, in Chapter 4, the younger participants discussed the principal element of code-switching which are the constrained use of facial expression and body movement during their interaction with white counterparts at the workplace or in educational settings. When they are not switching, they are using nonverbal communication patterns such as employing an animated facial expression and wider body movement.
Ray Birdwhistell, American Anthropologist, first coined kinesics in his work Introduction to Kinesics in 1952, he detailed the examination of facial expressions, body language, and gestures through interactions. He created an intricate annotation system in order to record body motion and facial displays (Birdwhistell, 1952, p.2). Ray Birdwhistell recognized that nonverbal communication tends not to be researched thoroughly. Through his extensive classification system, identified “the smallest meaningful unit of behavior” and labeled these as kinemes (Burgoon et al. 1996, p.39).
He concluded that there are 50 to 60 kinemes that are culturally universal (Burgoon et al, 1996, p.39) Cultural differences are then due to variations within kinemes, and not due to the use of different kinemes. This means that the same gesture can be used in numerous cultures, but can have a different meaning in each (Waiflein, 2013, p.4). Waiflein generally explained the example of how significant the kinemes are to understand the importance of nonverbal communication as Ray did in an interaction. He stated that “if a person
is showing empathy to a friend they lean in, furrow their eyebrows, and lower your head. Combinations of kinemes demonstrate more meaning than one displaying one kineme alone (Waiflein, 2013, p.4).
In fact, Black scholars have investigated the role of nonverbal communication patterns in the Black culture. Kenneth R. Johnson devised his earlier hypotheses about the relationship between the Black dialect of English and nonverbal communication patterns. His first hypothesis was that “Black dialect has a different base of development from other varieties of American (even though it is similar to other varieties of American English and it has shares many common features can be extended to non-verbal communication patterns” (Johnson, 1975, p.2). Johnson linked the history of de jure segregation of African American communities in America to his second hypothesis. His second hypothesis was that “the isolation of the Black population from other Americans produced some differences in non-verbal communication patterns within the Black Culture” (Johnson, 1975, p.2). He hoped that the research proved the validity of his hypotheses is that, “non-verbal communication in the Black Culture could be a result of former African patterns and also a result of patterns that have evolved out of the indigenous conditions of Black Americans (Johnson, 1975, p.2).
Johnson warned that it is essential not to be assumed that a Black person will display features of kinesics communication patterns that are commonly found in high frequency in the Black population. Johnson in his Black Kinesics paper described two different eye movements that expressed the disproval look. Rolling the eyes is a non-verbal way of expressing impudence and disapproval of the person who is in the authority role and of communicating every negative label that can be applied to the dominant person. The movement of the eyes communicates all or parts of the message. The main message is hostility. Rolling the eyes is more common among Black females than it is among Black males (Johnson, 1975, p.2). Johnson mentioned in his Black Kinesics is that white teachers were not able to decode Black students’ “rolling the eyes” movement. His example of white teachers and Black students clearly indicates the failure of intercultural communication between these interlocutors. Johnson mentioned that there is not much research about “rolling the eyes” movements in Western African cultures to be compared to the eye movements in Black culture in America.
“Cut Eye” is another eye movement that is commonly used in African American communities. In Cut Eye and Suck-Teeth, John R. Rickford and Angela E. Rickford conduct their research about the relationship between cut-eye and suck-teeth movements in the Caribbean, United States, and Africa. After the initial glare, the eyeballs are moved in a highly coordinated and controlled movement down or diagonally across the line of the person’s body. This “cut “ with the eyes is the heart of the gesture, and may involve the single downward movement described above, or several sharp up-and-down movements. Both are generally completed by a final glare, and then the entire head may be turned away contemptuously from the person to the accompaniment of a loud suck-teeth (Rickford & Rickford, 1976, p.298).
Rickford and Rickford’s Table 1 of Cut-Eye in US 1978 results shows that most Black informants understood these cultural marker meanings of eye movement more than white informants do. As Table 1 indicates below, cut-eye as a lexical item and as a cultural form of behavior is almost totally unknown to White Americans. Only four of the thirty-five White informants displayed familiarity with the term. Of these, three said “to stare at someone,” and one suggested, “to look at someone out of the corner of the eye.” These are good descriptions of the initial stage of the gesture, but not of the complete sequences. And in none of the cases could a white informant execute the full gesture (Rickford & Rickford, 1976, p.300).
Behaviors such as rolling the eyes and neck, “giving skin,” and poking the lips are all nonverbals recognized in popular culture as “black” expressions and are used quite often to
parody or to stereotype African Americans. The same is true for the nonverbal behavior known as “snapping.” It consists of placing the thumb and the middle finger together to make a snapping sound (Johnson, 1995, p.123).
In SNAP! Culture paper, E.Patrick Johnson discussed that the snapping features that have different functions, not only for complimenting someone. The snapping features can be used for different purposes such as emphasizing its assertiveness in a person’s responses or can be used to insult someone depending on the context. Gays, as well as African-American women of any sexual practice, use snapping to compliment someone’s looks, a hairdo, or even inanimate objects. Snapping to compliment someone is not in and of itself a communal activity; rather, it is the shared cultural knowledge of its use in this context that makes it communal (Johnson, 1995, p.129). In Signing Black in America, the participants frequently talked about their incorporation of snapping features in their language uses.
Methodology
I recorded and analyzed a small portion of data from chapter 4 of the companion DVD titled The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: Its History and Structure and Signing Black in America on the YouTube website. Based on my participation observation, I selected four participants whose discourse markers of nonverbal communication features are being used in Black communities. I relied on ELAN annotation software to create a tier based on body anatomy consisting of a head, eye gaze, torso, shoulder, arm, hand, and mouth to show their movement. I also annotated my observation of the participant’s nonverbal communications as a discourse marker that is often found to be in Black communities.
Findings
On The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL, at 16:52–16:54 runtime, Dr. Carolyn McCaskill asked Texans participants discussed a question, “do you sign differently around Black Deaf people than you do with white Deaf people? Participant #1 almost immediately smiled and turned her head to break eye contact with an interviewer while slowly changing her hand shape from O to H before touching her non-dominant hand. Then she returns to make eye contact with the interviewer after she completed her sign to say “Of Course!” She used her neck and arm movements to emphasize her assertive answer to Dr. McCaskill’s question.
On The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL, at 16:54–16:57 runtimes, participant #2 gave participant #1 her smirk signal that she was pretending to be an interviewer to ask participant #1 why and concurrently bending forward with her hand on the hip pose and tilting her head to the left.
On Signing Black in America, at 14:14–14:17 runtimes, other participants who sat next to Participant #3 note that Black LBGT communities use “FIERCE” terms to compliment someone’s appearance. Participant #3 fingerspelled “FIERCE” then she snapped her fingers with her facial expression involving head tilt and eye tilt right while she bends backward slightly to give her highest compliment on someone’s appearance.
On Signing Black in America, at 14:51:400–14:54:000, participant #4 may be an ASL interpreter, but he described how this person happened to be a Black Deaf woman who expressed her assertive response by inserting a discourse marker which is a neck movement and snapping feature to reflect the fact that she is indeed a native D.C resident.
Discussion of my Findings and Limitation
My preliminary findings with the help of ELAN software involve discourse markers that include the embodiment of nonverbal communication patterns that appears in Black communities. Participant #1 and Participant #2 showed different functions of their nonverbal neck movements to provide various types of responses in this setting. Noticeably, Dr. McCaskill said, “ Now, that’s the perfect example!” in her exclamation response to Participant #2’s nonverbal movement patterns. Participants #3 and participant #4 used the snapping features in different contexts. Also, the snapping features index the participants’ gender identity.
What Wilcox noted is that often nonmanual articulators besides facial gestures, are not used to code grammatical functions which means the nonverbal communication that is found in a Black community is overlooked or omitted from the investigation if only focused on the phonically ofBlack ASL. Visual sonority can be derived from the proximity of the articulating joint (e.g., shoulder, elbow, fingers, etc.; Brentari, 1998), the type of movement during a sign’s production (Sandler, 1993), or by other perceptual variation like movement size (Crasborn, 2001) (Williams & Newman, 2015, p.172).
All participants showed the high sonority movement, however, participants #2, #3, and #4 showed a far more complex of their high sonority movement than the participant #1 which will be not easily replicated by signers who has a different socio-cultural background. Since both sonority and handshape markedness can be derived from both motoric and visual complexity, these differential effects of sonority and handshape markedness may change when signers are required to produce these signs. It is hypothesized that marked handshapes with high sonority movements are more easily perceived due to the increase in visual salience; it can be conversely hypothesized that signs with high sonority (i.e., high visual salience) and marked handshapes (i.e., high motoric complexity) are harder to produce overall (Williams & Newman, 2015, p.173). We will need to revisit the findings in Black ASL’s mosaic chart and possibly create a new comprehensive chart of grammatical analysis involving a detailed nonverbal communication system for Black ASL. Additionally, we will also need to examine Black scholars’ works on communicative acts and nonverbal communication patterns in Black communities.
Conclusion
My literature reviews and findings support my hypothesis that Black signers embodied the features of Black nonverbal communication systems in their language uses. My preliminary examination of these participants’ interviews and my findings do support my research questions about the expression of African American identity through their nonverbal communications and the factoring of Black culture on the high sonority movement within the grammatical construction of Black ASL.
I recalled the findings in the Black ASL Project book that the researchers did not include a comprehensive analysis of the cultural markers that link the influence of Black culture on the younger generation of Black signers who grew up in Black communities. Earlier Black scholars have a shared cultural knowledge of nonverbal communication patterns within Black culture. They could provide an adequate explanation of why Black signers commonly index their Black identity through these nonverbal communication patterns through language uses. Then we will have a better contextual understanding of how Black ASL can distinguish itself from ASL.
References
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Johnson, E. Patrick (1995) Snap! Culture: A different kind of “reading”, Text and Performance Quarterly, 15:2, 122–142, DOI: 10.1080/10462939509366110
Johnson, K. R. (1975). Black Kinesics — Some Non-Verbal Communication Patterns in the Black Culture. In J. L. Dillard (Ed.), Perspectives on Black English (pp. 296–306). DE GRUYTER MOUTON. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110905328.296
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Rickford, J. & Rickford, A. (1976). Cut-Eye and Suck-Teeth: African Words and Gestures in New World Guise. The Journal of American Folklore, 89(353), 17.
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Weldon, T. (2021). Middle-Class African American English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Williams, J., Newman Sharlene (2016). Impacts of Visual Sonority and Handshape Markedness on Second Language Learning of American Sign Language, The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, Volume 21, Issue 2, April 2016, Pages 171–186, https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/env055
Worthy, L. D., Lavigne, T., & Romero, F. (2020, July 27). Code switching. Culture and Psychology. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from https://open.maricopa.edu/culturepsychology/chapter/code-switching/
