Lost in transcription: the problematics of commensurability in academic representations of American Sign Language
-
Abigail Rosenthal
Abstract
Transcripts are exemplars of ethnographic translation, juxtaposing languages, genres, and perspectives. As such, they become sites where the author comments on the commensurability of not only languages, but also cultures. With no single standardized practice for transcribing American Sign Language (ASL), the variation in forms of transcription are the inscriptions of different approaches to the vexed question of the commensurability, or undistorted translation, between ASL and English and between Deaf culture and an academic audience. This article looks at three modes of transcription—broad translations, glosses, and pictorial representations—as well as how they are framed by their presentation and the surrounding text, and considers the implications of their use in a variety of anthropological, sociological, and linguistic studies. Transcripts are recognized as key sites at which academics take positions on different issues within the Deaf community, including linguistic variation and the very definition of deafness.
© 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial: entextualizing the institutional
- Introduction. Public transcripts: entextualization and linguistic representation in institutional contexts
- Captured on tape: professional hearing and competing entextualizations in the criminal justice system
- Transcribing refugees: the entextualization of asylum seekers' hearings in a transidiomatic environment
- Regimenting languages on Korean television: subtitles and institutional authority
- Entextualization, mediatization and authentication: orthographic choice in media transcripts
- Lost in transcription: the problematics of commensurability in academic representations of American Sign Language
- The making of a scription: a case study on authority and authorship
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial: entextualizing the institutional
- Introduction. Public transcripts: entextualization and linguistic representation in institutional contexts
- Captured on tape: professional hearing and competing entextualizations in the criminal justice system
- Transcribing refugees: the entextualization of asylum seekers' hearings in a transidiomatic environment
- Regimenting languages on Korean television: subtitles and institutional authority
- Entextualization, mediatization and authentication: orthographic choice in media transcripts
- Lost in transcription: the problematics of commensurability in academic representations of American Sign Language
- The making of a scription: a case study on authority and authorship
