(Plagarized from myself, presented for ease of convenience for readers needing extra background).
Critical scholarship on ASL has only recently started with William Stokoe’s seminal linguistic studies in the 1960’s leading the way. Stokoe proceeded from the premise that ASL contained features of languages such as a complex grammar and vocabulary, where other scholars assumed that ASL was simply a translation of English put into gestures. Padden and Humphries state that ASL was “not made up merely of gestures any more than English is made up merely of noises. Individual signs are themselves structured grammatical units, which are placed in slots within sentences according to grammatical rules” (Deaf in America 7). Stokoe’s linguistic studies were quickly followed by others’ research, which led to a sweeping change within the Deaf community and scholarship. Before the research, “[Deaf people] had called [their] language ‘the sign language,’ […] but with the advent of scientific studies on sign languages, [their] language acquired a new name, ‘American Sign Language’ or ‘ASL’” (Inside 2).
Stokoe proposed that signs in ASL had three parts that were “meaningless elements that combine to form all signs, in the same way that phonemes combine to form words in spoken languages” (Valli and Lucas 26). The three parts were location, handshape and movement. Location refers to where the sign is performed. One location may be at the jaw. Another location may be in front of the chest. Yet another location may be at the temple. Stokoe categorized 12 locations although more have been recognized later. Stokoe categorized 19 handshapes, although to date over 150 have been found. Handshape Finally, Stokoe found 23 distinct movements in his research. This had to do with the direction the hands would move to create the sign.
New foundations for ASL linguistics come from the work of Liddell and Johnson. They added two more parts to signs in ASL, “orientation […] and nonmanual signals” (37). Orientation refers to where the handshapes are when the sign begins and ends, and differs from location. For example, a handshape B may begin with the palm facing up, then end with the palm facing down, all taking place in one location, that of the space in front of the signer’s chest. Nonmanual signals is probably the most overlooked element of signs because to the uninformed (or perhaps uninitiated) viewer, the hand itself holds the most attention. Nonmanual signals refer to facial expressions, positions of the eyebrows, head, shoulders, and sometimes even the whole body. A raised eyebrow changes HE-GO WILL (He will go) from a statement to a question (He will go?).
Liddell and Johnson also posited a new view of ASL that Valli and Lucas call the “Movement-Hold Model.” Liddell and Johnson stated that signs were composed of periods of movement and holds that are produced sequentially. During hold periods, all five aspects of signs remain “steady,” while in the movement periods, at least one or more aspects can change. For instance, a sign begins with one handshape and ends with another handshape: starting with a Hold, then during Movement, the handshape changes, then the final handshape is held in the final Hold period.
Classifiers, signs that indicate certain semantic or grammatical categories, exist in ASL. There are specific handshapes that indicate vehicles, and the signer can use these classifiers to show orientation, motion, distance, interactions with the vehicle, and other information. One can accurately describe having a vehicular collision that includes direction, speed, point of impact, and aftermath without ever dropping the handshape classifier for CAR. Research has shown how densely packed information can be encoded into signs. Other classifiers listed by Valli and Lucas are those for surface, instruments (holding/using objects), depth and width (indicating size), extent (showing amount), perimeter-shape (showing shapes of objects), and on-surface (indicating large groups of objects) (82).
Valli and Lucas address the two basic ways one can look at the signs in ASL: iconic and arbitrary (5). Iconicity refers to signs that visually resemble the concept or object. Naturally, this is the most apparent part of ASL. However, not all signs mime or look like the referent object or concept. These signs are arbitrary; the sign is assigned an agreed-upon meaning. Valli and Lucas point out that all languages, spoken and signed, contain both iconic and arbitrary signs. For example, the letter O in the English language can be considered an iconic sign because it resembles the mouth shape produced when saying /o/. Valli and Lucas also point out the relationship of iconicity to onomatopoeia (e.g. a word is a sound—clunk) and phonestheia (e.g. groups of words that look alike and their form seem to indicate their meaning. Valli and Lucas cite Bolinger’s observation of English words ending in ‘–ump’ all tend to relate to bluntness and heaviness) (5-6).
Valli and Lucas go on to defend (or dilute) the iconicity in ASL. They state that iconicity of a sign often focuses only on one part of the whole, and don’t necessarily become “literal” representations of the object (7). They present this example regarding SIT. The sign for SIT could be construed as to be an iconic representation of a person’s legs sitting on a surface. However, they point out that the sign for SIT is also used in reference to a cat sitting. Cats obviously have four legs, while the sign only indicates two legs. Yet, the meaning remains the same, the cat is sitting, regardless of the inaccuracy of the iconicity. This then makes the iconic sign for SIT akin to an arbitrary sign. Valli and Lucas also point out that in different native signs, the same object can end up with different yet iconic signs. This indicates arbitrariness at work in iconic signs.
Iconicity is a significant issue for one main reason—its seemingly unsophisticated nature. It probably would be the primary reason why uninformed people have assumed that ASL was only an imitative language that had the English language as its base. Valli and Lucas state, “linguists had a definite sense that admitting the existence of iconicity in sign languages was admitting that sign languages were not ‘real’ languages, certainly not as real as spoken languages whose forms were supposedly arbitrary. It was as though the arbitrary nature of ASL signs had to be emphasized to prove that ASL is a real language and not just a collection of ‘pictures in the air’” (5). However, as they and other linguists have pointed out, spoken languages contain iconicity, so iconicity does not detract from the legitimacy of ASL.