Talking With Your Hands, Listening With Your Eyes: A Complete Photographic Guide to American Sign Language [Paperback]

Gabriel Grayson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 075700007X | ISBN-13: 978-0757000072 | Publication Date: February 1, 2003 | Edition: 1

After English and Spanish, it is the third most common language in North America. Over 22 million people use it to communicate. It has its own beauty, its own unmistakable form, and its own inherent culture. It is American Sign Language (ASL), the language of the deaf.

Gabriel Grayson has put together a book that makes signing accessible, easy, and fun. Using almost 1,400 photographs, he has created a comprehensive primer to the techniques, words,

and phrases of signing. Each word or phrase is accompanied by a photo or series of photos that show hand and body motions and facial expressions. Along with the images are step-by-step instructions for forming the sign, as well as a helpful “Visualize” tip that connects the sign with its meaning for easier recall.

After examining the fascinating history and nature of both sign language and the deaf community, Talking With Your Hands explains signing basics, covering such topics as handshapes, fingerspelling, signing etiquette, and more. The remaining chapters provide over 1,700 words and phrases. Throughout the book, informative insets focus on fascinating aspects of deaf history, deaf culture, and significant deaf personalities.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Grayson, chair of the New School University's department of sign language, created this massive reference in the hopes of "making it easier to understand, duplicate and remember the vocabulary" of American Sign Language, which is used by an estimated 500,000 deaf people in the U.S. and Canada. Grayson can hear, but was born to parents who were both deaf, and his first means of trained communication was sign language. The book covers more than 900 signs that represent nearly 1,800 words and phrases, with signs grouped by topic, e.g., common and polite phrases; mealtime and food; school and education; careers, jobs and the workplace;and the body and health. One or more photos of professional signers demonstrating the sign formation accompany a discussion of each sign. Grayson provides instructions for each word, explaining the hand shape, the position in front of the body where the sign is made and the type of movement involved in expressing the word. Perhaps most useful is the "visualize" portion of each entry, which often explains the essence of the sign. For example, when signing the word "farmer," which involves moving one's hand across the chin and then down the chest, visualize yourself depicting "the bushy beard of a farmer." Although the photos are on the small side (about two inches square), Grayson's instructions are detailed and clearly written. Especially valuable are the educational sidebars on what it's like to live as a deaf person in the U.S., including a suggested reading list on the history of deaf culture, a discussion of how technology has created more career options for deaf people and a list of American films featuring deaf protagonists. Index.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-An outstanding, user-friendly resource for those interested in learning ASL. Signs are grouped into chapters based on their meanings. The meanings and synonyms are in large, blue print; descriptions of the hand shape, position, and movement are set in smaller, black type. One or two black-and-white, 2" x 2" photographs of the entire torso show the beginning and end of a sign; superimposed arrows indicate additional movement. These pictures are clear enough for new signers to follow. Additional photos at the bottom of the page show only hand shapes, making clear what might not be visible due to the angle of the primary illustrations. Signers shown represent diverse cultural backgrounds. The index enables readers to locate both the desired sign and its antonym. Throughout, boxed inserts present thorough, insightful articles on such subjects relating to deaf culture as medical conditions and assistive technology. This information alone makes the book a wonderful resource.
Claudia Moore, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Square One Pub; 1 edition (February 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 075700007X
• ISBN-13: 978-0757000072
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,159 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Instruction > Sign Language

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent introduction to ASL, May 11, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Talking With Your Hands, Listening With Your Eyes: A Complete Photographic Guide to American Sign Language (Paperback)

This book is an excellent introduction to ASL and Deaf culture issues. There is a manageable number of basic signs and insets providing details about being deaf in a hearing world, information on famous deaf people, and technological advances useful for the deaf. The introduction also contains a concise history of deaf education. The author is extremely credible, which is something important to me when learning a new language!

From the instruction of a single deaf individual, I have developed a rudimenary knowledge of sign language: the alphabet, numbers, various greetings, some nouns and adjectives. This book has helped me to reinforce what I know, clean up the sloppy signing I had been doing, and learn new things. I have had trouble learning signs from books in the past because I would often miss something important. With this book, I've felt very comfortable with the new signs because of the format. The combination of specific written descriptions with pictures gives a very understandable way to learn new signs. The added bonus of mnemonic devices to remember which sign is which is very helpful. It's embarrassing to admit, but I kept confusing the signs for "yes" and "no" until I read the helpful hints in this book - not a good thing to get wrong!

There may be books with more words in them, but I would recommend this book for all beginners, and advanced beginners like myself. Once the signs here are learned (and as in my case cleaned up considerably), then start looking for more comprehensive works. I've been practicing about 30-100 words a night depending on how many I already knew and feel very confident that I'm finally doing them correctly.

71 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Mostly useless, December 16, 2010

By 

Eric G. Wilkinson (Eugene, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Talking With Your Hands, Listening With Your Eyes: A Complete Photographic Guide to American Sign Language (Paperback)

Looks like I get to be the first negative review for this book. I'm guessing the author has lots of colleagues/friends/family/students.

I got this book so I could learn ASL to talk with a deaf friend.

The good: It contains a fairly comprehensive set of signs. There were only a couple signs I tried to find and couldn't.

The bad: For starters, while there are photos for the facial expressions, the other head and face movement components of the signs are not indicated. Nor is there any text to describe the shown facial expressions, so one has to guess as to whether or not any facial expression is actually necessary and what its intention is. These are vital parts of ASL signs that are mostly left out of this book.

When I started going through this I found that some of the signs conflict with 3 other ASL books I had been using. When I showed this book to my deaf friend she said the book was wrong. We both went through Chapter 2 together, counted, and 25% of the signs were signs that she said were wrong, and my other 3 ASL books, for the most part, agreed with my friend. I had at first attributed this discrepancy to regional variation, but the problem is too pronounced. Either regional variations in ASL are mutually unintelligible (in which case they wouldn't be regional variations of the same language) or this book is using the wrong signs a quarter of the time.

It should also be noted that many of the signs in the book that we classified as correct are actually only just "close to correct". Many of them are simplified versions of the real ASL signs. Important hand (and head) movements are quite often omitted in both the photographs and the text.

Even more disappointing is that this book contains absolutely nothing about ASL grammar. It's just a dumping of signs, a categorized dictionary. This book provides no instruction for learning the actual language. A language is much more than just the vocabulary. If all you want is a dictionary, there are numerous free ASL dictionaries online which will show you the signs, many showing signs with videos so you get all the information needed to PROPERLY make those signs, and those dictionaries are at least as accurate, most are more accurate, than this book.

I recommend you save your money for something else.

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the perfect book has yet to come out, June 21, 2004

By 

Michael S. Gocinski "Cuzin Mike" (Bel Air, Maryland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Talking With Your Hands, Listening With Your Eyes: A Complete Photographic Guide to American Sign Language (Paperback)

One of the best sign language learning books available. The pictures and desciptions of how to make the sign are excellent. However, no one book has every sign. Buy this for your personal library, it is the clearest book on how to make a particular sign. Even books that I consider very good such as "The American Sign Language Sign Book" by Louie Fant sometimes leave me confused by unclear drawings or descriptions. Gabriel Grayson's book is a great cross reference for times like these or for building your vocabulary to the point where you can move on to learning phrases and grammar.