Shortly after the 2020 presidential election, five women joined forces with a mission: assigning Vice President-elect Kamala Harris a name sign, the equivalent of a person’s name in American Sign Language.
The women, Ebony Gooden, Kavita Pipalia, Smita Kothari, Candace Jones and Arlene Ngalle-Paryani — as Black and Indian members of the “capital D Deaf community” (a term used by some deaf people to indicate that they embrace deafness as a cultural identity and communicate primarily through ASL) — felt it was important that the selection of Ms. Harris’s name sign be the result of an inclusive and democratic process. Given that Vice President Harris was the first female vice president, as well as the first Black and Indian candidate to fill the role, they agreed that her heritage should inform that process, the women recalled in an interview using interpreters.
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Turning to social media, they called on other Black and Indian deaf women to join their effort. They set up a system for people to submit suggestions for a name sign, advertised their initiative and its guidelines, led virtual panels and collected video submissions. Eventually, they put the entries to a vote.
“It’s truly a badge of honor,” Ms. Ngalle-Paryani said, signing, of the selection of her submission. “I really do feel that it fits Madam Vice President.”
Name signs, also known as sign names, are an important component of “capital D Deaf” culture. In 1992, the linguist Samuel J. Supalla noted in “The Book of Name Signs” that they serve two functions: They provide deaf people with a way to identify themselves and others in conversation, while also representing “a Deaf person’s membership in the Deaf community.”
Benjamin J. Bahan, a professor in the Deaf Studies department at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the nation’s only liberal arts university devoted to deaf people, said that “name signs usually come from parents who are deaf.” If a child does not receive one growing up, perhaps because he or she was raised by hearing parents, he added, the name may be assigned at a later stage.
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As people go through life, they may receive new name signs that replace earlier ones. If they have a strong connection to other countries, they may also receive name signs in other sign languages, such as Japanese Sign Language or Russian Sign Language. (Vice President Harris was recently assigned a name sign in British Sign Language.)
In ASL, people’s name signs coexist with their English names, which are used for official purposes and can be communicated by fingerspelling — spelling out the name letter by letter, using hand shapes for the alphabet.
Dr. Supalla writes that name signs can be classified as being arbitrary, descriptive or nontraditional.
Arbitrary names use alphabetic hand shapes, corresponding to the initial of one’s first, middle or last name. Several combinations are possible based on the location of the hands in relation to the body, as well as whether there is any movement involved. Dr. Supalla shares in his book that his name sign belongs to this category; it consists of the hand shape associated with the letter “S,” moving from one side of the chin to the other.
Descriptive names are normally based on personal characteristics — like personality or appearance — and are conveyed through hand shapes that are known as classifiers, evocative of the attributes.
Nontraditional name signs combine elements from arbitrary and descriptive naming conventions.
Dr. Supalla explains in his book that while originally, name signs were reserved for deaf people, the growing number of hearing people who use ASL and regularly interact with deaf people has meant that many non-deaf individuals today have name signs. Even so, hearing people may never assign a name sign. As Ms. Ngalle-Paryani noted, only a deaf person may do so.
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Dr. Padden said that recently, deaf people have become more engaged in the process of selecting name signs for hearing politicians and well-known individuals. It’s a way for people to acknowledge those individuals “and show alliance with them,” she said.
Ms. Gooden, one of the five women who came together for Ms. Harris’s name, said that as the conversation around a possible name sign for the vice president started taking shape on social media, non-Black and non-Indian deaf individuals — mostly men — were leading the dialogue.
For the women involved, it was key that Black and Indian deaf women were part of the process, given Ms. Harris’s background.
“Name signs given to political leaders are usually created by white men, but for this one we wanted to not only represent women, but diversity — Black women, Indian women,” Ms. Kothari said. For her, social media was a powerful way of making sure the perspectives of minorities were included. (The project was even more significant because Vice President Harris has in the past spoken publicly in support of deaf rights, Ms. Pipalia said.)
“As a group of deaf women that are Black and Asian, we were creating visibility for us but we were also showing that we have agency,” Ms. Pipalia added. “It was a historic moment.”
Equally important, Ms. Pipalia said, was including the diverse linguistic perspectives of deaf people, which is why the group included women fluent in ASL as well as Black American Sign Language, or BASL, a variation that is specific to people who are Black and deaf in the United States.
Ms. Pipalia said that she hopes that by taking the lead in the initiative to pick a name sign for Vice President Harris, the group is setting an example for other deaf women who feel marginalized and inviting them to take charge in their lives. “I hope that this can open the door for others to follow, just like our vice president, Kamala Harris, is doing,” she said.
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHICH
