NotAnotherBard
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- Jan 15, 2021
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I'm currently writing a culture for a game I play, and I wanted to include sign as a second language used right along side their verbal one. I want to do this both to give myself further encouragement to learn ASL, and also to start normalizing within my social group the idea of nonverbal communication having equal significance so that maybe more people will go and learn sign themselves. (I can give more details on the nature of the game and the culture I'm writing but this is the summary so I don't go on forever.)
With all that for context, I have two questions.
To my understanding so far, the Deaf community generally wants more hearing people to know ASL to reduce the separation between those two worlds. This is what I'm attempting to do, but I also want to make sure that I give ASL and Deaf culture the respect they deserve. Is the idea of a fictional culture within a wider fictional world actively using both a spoken language and a signed one insensitive in any way? Is there something I'm not considering here?
And second, how does this affect certain aspects of Deaf culture that are meant to be only for Deaf people? The example I've run into is Signed Names, which to my understanding a hearing person isn't supposed to give themselves one, just fingerspell their name and wait to be given one by a member of the Deaf Community. In the case of a person from this fictional culture, who is both hearing and also a native user of sign and written by a hearing person, how do I bridge that gap? For this example, could I, a hearing person, give that character a signed name that in world would have been given to them by another native user of sign, like a parent? Is there a way at all to bridge this gap, or should I leave things like that out entirely?
My worry is that leaving these things out would somehow cheapen the representation by removing depth, but I also worry that I would be insulting the Deaf Community by including and using them as a hearing person.
Any advice is appreciated
With all that for context, I have two questions.
To my understanding so far, the Deaf community generally wants more hearing people to know ASL to reduce the separation between those two worlds. This is what I'm attempting to do, but I also want to make sure that I give ASL and Deaf culture the respect they deserve. Is the idea of a fictional culture within a wider fictional world actively using both a spoken language and a signed one insensitive in any way? Is there something I'm not considering here?
And second, how does this affect certain aspects of Deaf culture that are meant to be only for Deaf people? The example I've run into is Signed Names, which to my understanding a hearing person isn't supposed to give themselves one, just fingerspell their name and wait to be given one by a member of the Deaf Community. In the case of a person from this fictional culture, who is both hearing and also a native user of sign and written by a hearing person, how do I bridge that gap? For this example, could I, a hearing person, give that character a signed name that in world would have been given to them by another native user of sign, like a parent? Is there a way at all to bridge this gap, or should I leave things like that out entirely?
My worry is that leaving these things out would somehow cheapen the representation by removing depth, but I also worry that I would be insulting the Deaf Community by including and using them as a hearing person.
Any advice is appreciated