When thinking of a medium, I considered how people usually communicate and immediately thought of speaking, or vocal communication. Yet, as I thought about how those communicate when they are unable to use their voice, I came upon sign language. The idea of using only movements by one’s hands to convey an extremely complex message is extremely interesting. Additionally, the application of sign language is much larger than most anticipate.
The most basic application of sign language would be the fundamental concept of using one’s hands to create letters and words. This is commonly seen at public functions such as an event speaker, with a person sitting on the side translating his/her words to sign language. What is intriguing here is that the audience interpreting the signs from the person creating the sign language is interpreting these messages as ideas created by the speaker. Thus, the speaker’s ideas depend on what the person creating the signs relays to the audience who depends of the sign language. Croteau and Hoynes explain this idea when they write “in the education example, the structure of education constrains students, but students also have a great deal of leeway in what they study” (21). Relating back to the idea of the event speaker, the person creating the sign is constrained by the event speaker, but he/she ultimately has absolute control over what he/she relays to the audience through what he/she decides to sign.
What sign language presents is this setting is whether the event speaker or the person relaying the signs has more control over the message constructed. What do you think?
Here's an example of two guys doing sign language of another's piece of music:
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