Chapter 11

Chapter 11 talks about different signs for Korean, Chinese, and Japanese that have been created. I thought it was interesting when the book talked about male and female signs. It was kind of weird to think about the fact that old-fashioned ways of signing are still around; in the male and female aspect. I guess that it would be silly to switch up the vocabulary of sign language just because the world is different now. It says how the signs for "gabby" and "gossipy" are made in the "feminine zone" and the signs for "intelligent," "brilliant," and "genius" are in the "male zone (p. 93)."

The book gets into talking about the signs for different ethnicity of people. It says how some African American Deaf people will prefer the old ways to sign black. Some Deaf people don't realize that the signs they make for other cultures could be offensive now. There are new ways to sign these different people and some cultures have their own signs for themselves. The book states that it would be good to listen to these people and their signs (p. 94). "Sign language can change to modern needs (p.95)."

While reading this chapter I didn't think too much into these different ways to sign. I was really interested in the male and female zones and that type of thing. I guess I should be more interested in the African American, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean culture of signs but it didn't spark my interest. I took a women studies class a few semesters ago here at WKU and I know my teacher would be very interested in the different female and male signing zones. Honestly, she would probably be pretty ticked off about the "brilliant" and "genius" thing. Since I took a women studies class I thought this section of the chapter was fun to read about. I was surprised but then again I shouldn't have been since most of these signs were made long ago.