SANDRA FAULKNER

American Sign Language

The Structure of Silence: Time space and Force

 

Learning any new language can be tricky.  Culture matters. Norms and regional differences familiar to the native speaker are often elusive to the outsider. When the language is neither spoken nor written, and used exclusively by the deaf community, mistakes will be made by the hearing learner.

 

 

After teaching ASL and serving as an ASL interpretor for years, these are the core things I took away.

 

The hands are faster than the eyes.

Let me explain.

When interpreting from spoken word into ASL, beginning interpreters often make the mistake of trying to keep up with that which is spoken, rushing along, hands flying trying to keep the pace of the speaker and in the process forgetting that the primary responsibility is not to interpret that which is being said, but rather, the job is to effectively communicate to the deaf person, that which is being expressed.  In other words, good interpreting requires a paradigm shift, you are communicating clearly the message, in a language full of nuances that are shared inside and among members of the deaf community.  A community that, if you are not a native speaker, is in any number of ways, all but closed to you.

 

Syntax is tricky 

 

ASL has its own syntax and it also shares many of its rules with spoken and written languages.  But there are nuances that syntax, word order and choice that do not always come naturally to the student. 

Early on as I was  teaching and interpreting, I made the mistake of explaining that ASL was structured more like Chinese than English.  First mistake was arrogance, I didn't speak Chinese languages and had only a passing knowledge of their structure.  The second was trying to impose the rules of written and spoken English onto a langauge that lived in silence and in the air, where its cadence is defined by  body postion, facial expression and shifts, and hand motion simultaneously, layered, as if stacked, something not possible while speaking. 

 

Where volume is modulated by the hearing speaker by voice, for the deaf speakers, it is controlled, or modulated by movement in space, and time. 

The elements of movement are: time, space and force (or speed).  

 

Variance in time, use of space and force, (or speed), are the tools used for cadence, depending on many factors  including but not limited to personal style, regional norms and dialects (accents, if you will) and random factors ( or so it sometime appears) that include where the last thought (sign) ended.  

 

 

AI: A Few Thoughts

May 15, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

My experience with AI is limited, but like most of us, my interaction with it grows daily. 

Like many writers, I have a love-hate relationship with it. I appreciate that it condenses knowledge into easily accessible bits, available to each of us who has a supercomputer in the palm of our hands. Who wouldn't like that? 

 

 I dislike that it learns ( read: steals) from my writing and consumes it.  My sentences and thoughts, even these humble initial ones, will be part of its digital brain bank. In a minute, I will push the publish button, and then, within seconds, my thoughts, words, and sentences will be consumed, processed, and they will belong to something artificial and intelligent.  

 

I ran a test 

I admit, upfront, that my interaction with the writing programs was bare-bones and basic, driven by curiosity and viewed through a lens of skepticism. That said, I did my best to keep an open mind and silence critical voices that have called the enemy of creativity a copyright thief, and a present and future threat to the world of books, films, and signals, perhaps,  the dramatic reduction of the creative class—those who make their living in the fine arts.  

 

This is what I did: 

 I took a collaborative approach, thinking AI would act as a coauthor of sorts, producing several different scenes.  I write good prompts and questions and set clear parameters.  We know from experience that clear writing is a reflection of clear thinking, and that, like painting a house, most of the work is in the preparation: motives, length, genre, mood, and the length of the First. I had to define the central question to be answered within the scene: Does the character know she is being followed? What was set and stated? 

 

 

 

In the end, the bot made the scenes scarier than I had imagined. It added factual information, such as weather conditions of the time and place, and knew and incorporated the number of steps inside the building (The Astor Column), all within the given parameters. 

 
Was it usable?

Not much of it. 

AI produced several pages of cliches, strange tropes, and sentences that lacked the normal rhythm and cadence found in good work. Dare I say, it sounded robotic to me? 

 

Was it a waste of time?

No, I used the weather information, the number of stairs inside the building, and one or two other facts that I would have found, but it would have taken me much more time. 

 

The above issues will be resolved; AI will consume more original writing that, at this very moment, is being produced by more creative and innovative humans. It will likely master nuance and learn to generate good questions, with suitable parameters. There is little doubt that it will be used in film and writing, held back or limited only by the WGA, AGA, and future regulatory limitations. 

I conclude that AI has social implications, as explored within the scope of books and films.  AI is seductive because it caters to our inner sloth, allowing us to follow the path of least resistance. Yawn.

 

We are no longer on a slippery slope when it comes to bots and the written word.  We are floating on a river moving toward the deepest resting place, before settling there.  Our laziness, and their speed and ease, may be our downfall. 

 

Remember, clear writing is the direct outcome of clear thinking. 

Resist the urge to rely entirely on AI and continue fighting to preserve nuance and human agency.  

 

 

Jury Consultants and Book Editors:
Common Traits

 

At the heart of each book, and the center of each trial, there is a story that must be told, and told well. Publishing and litigation exist under pressure and are driven by the loud, constant ticking of a clock.  

 

There is a fundamental misconception about what both editors and jury consultants do for their clients. For example, an outsider to the field may think that a jury consultant selects juries for high-profile cases, and that an editor corrects manuscripts and pulls the work out of the writer. Surprisingly, these two things happen, but they are not always the core functions or roles. What an editor does for a writer has little to do with punctuation (see Didion below), and what a jury consultant does for a case has less to do with the letter of the law and everything to do with identifying and evaluating the social and psychological factors surrounding the trial. 

Jury consultants focus on the cultural perception of the law or procedural justice. Their journey begins months before the trial, starting with questions: What social factors will influence the case? What are the filters by which jurors will see and hear the attorney's arguments? Are the attorney's arguments credible? Does this case warrant the expense of hiring a jury consultant? Will the story hold up to a group of twelve? Why? Why not? 

Is this beginning to sound like an editor's job to you?

A good editor can recognize something magical even when it is scrambled and raw, not yet fully defined on the page. They appreciate the energy in the writer's words. They can identify the force within the writer that cannot be extinguished (even when the writer is faced with the daunting task of countless weeks or years of what will seem like an endless cycle of revisions, rejections, revisions...). 

 

Author Joan Didion, when writing about her long-time editor, Henry Robbins, explains what he did for her work (AFTER HENRY, Vintage, 1992, page 20). "What editors do for writers is mysterious, and does not, contrary to popular belief, have much to do with titles and sentences and 'changes'," Didion explains that the relationship is subtle and profound, both elusive and radical, at times somewhat paternal. In the end, she explains that Henry Robbins "was the person who gave the writer the idea of himself that enabled the writer to sit down alone and do it." 

What does the above have to do with lawyers and jury consultants?

Jury consultants and editors work with people who either write about, or fight for, things that matter-things that matter to them and things that ought to matter to all of us. 

 

 

 

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