CLIC Speaker Abstracts

Elizabeth Keating (Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin), March 16, 2000.

"American Sign Language in Virtual Space: Interactions between Deaf Users of Video Telephone and the Impact of Technology on Language Practices."

According to some discussions concerning new information technologies and technologically enhanced communication, we are now in a revolution as important as that set off by the printing press. The internet is creating new kinds of meeting places and work areas and the possibilities of new forms of visual access to others with new space transcending capacities. This paper discusses a research project aimed at analyzing how members of the Deaf community use new technologies for sign language communication and develop strategies for visual language conversation in a new media space. Due to constraints on signing space and signal speed, signers accommodate their signing in interesting ways. The medium also provides participants with opportunities for complex new participation frameworks and this talk concerns some ways participants collaboratively develop and organize new communicative activities.