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Sign Language Literature Chapter 8 - Coggle Diagram
Sign Language Literature Chapter 8
Titles, introductions and other performance openers
People familiar with European-origin literary traditions are used to the idea that stories and poems begin with their title.
Particularly true with written literature butt less so in oral literature.
Sign language stories, especially when they are performed informally, rarely start with a title and signing poets do not always give the titire for their piece before starting the poem, perhaps in keeping with more oral traditions.
Beginning and Endings
It is not always easy to tell when a signed work starts and ends.
The text is usually considered central to a poem, and we can focus on how that starts and ends.
The beginning: 'cracking the whip'
Steven Ryan, a great ASL storyteller as well as researcher (whose research we explored in previous chapters), advised notice storytellers to 'capture your audience with a well-baited hook'
This advice to hook the audience from the start is even more important in poetry where a strong beginning to catch the audience's attention.
The ending: stopping or concluding?
All poems and stories stop eventually, but a strong piece usually ends with closure that creates a coherent, complete and stable feel to the work.
Poem may close gently with a sense that there is no more to be said, or sharply with something unexpected.
Like all conventions, those that create closure in a poem change and vary but there are elements that typically occur aat ending and audiences recognise them as endings.
Closure devices created by the 'voice' of the poet-showing and telling
We have briefly observed in the previous chapters that some signed pieces 'narrate' the story by addressing the audience, whereas others more directly show the action to the audience.
These different ways of telling or showing are called voice (a narrative voice and a more dramatic voice), and they can create different endings.
Chinese poetry traditionally starts with concrete images, moves to more abstract ideas and ends with a more concrete image.
Sign language poems that explore ideas rather than create narratives do not have natural stopping points driven by their content and these often follow the traditional 'Western' structure of ending with abstract ideas.
Closure devices driven by content of the text
Closure in many stories occurs when we have reached the natural end of the story and too go any further would require a major shift in plot.
Natural endings also occur when we can predict what will happen next so there is no need to tell us ore.
It is common folklore device for a poem or song to. finish when it gets back to the beginning.
Closure devices within the form of the text
While the content of a sign language text can determine its point of closure, the form of the signs often works with it.