PhDniX's blog

Deaf Poetry

Several days ago, I woke up and I wonder all of a sudden: 'I wonder if there's Deaf Poetry'. I got out of bed, and the first thing I did was look it up. And it exists!

It's actually quite interesting, but maybe not as linguistically relevant. Still I'd like to talk about it.
The experessions of deaf poetry can be far more complex than spoken language, for example they have such a thing as rhyme. Certain signs can be very similar in gesture, and thus they 'rhyme'. But there's more complex forms of rhyme in sign language. One could only use signs that have one certain direction for example. Or start with gestures close to the body, and end with gestures far from the body. All of this can add a lot of extra symbolism to the poem.

I'm starting to think, that if you're into poetry, you might even be better off speaking American Sign Language, than any human language.

Relevant link:
http://www.georgetown.edu/research/i2/asl/

What the Frack?!

Today I'd like to talk about something I personally found very intersting while watching the series Battlestar Galactica.
From a linguistic point of view it's quite convincing as a series.

It is set in a world, in which humans live in space, and earth is unknown. But not only earth, but also monotheistic (and markable Christian) religion. Obviously this would have an enormous effect on their vocabulary, for example 'goddamn' would lose all of it's meaning. I appreciate it that they actually realized this. So when someone would say 'goddamn' you'll hear 'godsdamn' and 'oh my god' is 'oh my gods!'. (Their religion is based on the greek polytheistic religion). Such little things really add up to the plausability of the series.

Also one of the famous exclamations of the series is 'Frack', which actually has the same use and impact as 'Fuck' has in this world. But it just makes a bit of a gap to make you realize that their not from earth. It's the little things that make the difference.

There's also some things to be said against the plausability from a linguistic point of view though. Like why is Gaius Baltar the only person in the universe with a british accent. It's rather strange to have an ideolect which is absolutely nothing like the general american dialect which seems to be spoken by all the other humans in the universe.

Is this a real problem? No not really. I found it more interesting to point out how many things are taken care of to increase the plausability, not only the visuals, the religion etc. etc. but also the language that is used in the series.