Gloss in American Sign Language (ASL) (2024)

"Glossing" is what you call it when you write one language in another. The written information is known as "gloss."

When we see someone signing and we write it down or type it out sign for sign and include various notations to account for the facial and body grammar that goes with the signs--we are "glossing ASL."

When you gloss, you are not trying to interpret a language. Rather you are attempting to transcribe it. Your goal is to write it down, type it, or otherwise represent it in text form -- word for word.

So, why don't we just call it writing?

The difference between "writing in a language" and "glossing of a language" has to do with the fact that the target language may not have equivalent words to represent the original language.

For example, in American Sign Language (ASL) we have a sign known as "PAH!" Loosely translated it means "At last! Finally! Success! Ta da! Voilà! Presto!) This "sign" requires a plosive sound to be made as if saying "pah!" (Which makes the gloss of PAH! a rather obvious choice.) ASL also uses special signs known as ASLclassifiers that are difficult to write in English. For example, there is a sign that uses a "3-handshape" which is commonly used to represent "vehicles." This sign not only represents a vehicle but it also can include information regarding the location, orientation, speed, direction, and movement path of the vehicle.

This sign is glossed as 3-CL: "additional information goes here."
Example: 3-CL: "goes uphill"
You might also see a "classifier 3" glossed as "CL-3" or "CL:3."

Glossing allows researchers (and students) to make notes in their own language regarding the second language. For example, an English-speaking researcher would use gloss to transcribe the "clicks" of the tongue that occur in the Bantu languages of South Africa (such as Zulu).

Below are some conventional (typical / normal) "glossing" symbols and notation.

ASL Glossing Conventions

"+" When you see a plus symbol it means to repeat the sign.

What is another name for the rules that researchers have generally agreed upon for typical or standard ways to do things? * conventions

What term means choosing an appropriate English word for signs in order to write them down? * Glossing

List some sample conventions of glossing: * Sample 1: small caps, Sample 2: #, Sample 3: M-A-R-Y, Sample 4: _____t

When glossing, what do we represent with small capital letters preceded by the # symbol? * lexicalized fingerspelled words

What do we call the facial expressions that accompany certain signs? * Nonmanual signals (or nonmanual markers, or NMMs)

What kind of features are indicated on a line above sign glosses? * Nonmanual signals and eye gaze

When glossing, what do we use "small capital letters" in English to represent? * Signs

When glossing, what is represented by dashes between small capital letters? * full fingerspellling

What are some glossed examples of lexicalized fingerspellling? * #WHAT, #BURN, #ALL

Note: The GLOSS label of an ASL sign doesn't equal "English." For example, the sign glossed as "FINE" doesn't mean all of the things that the English word "fine" means. I wouldn't use the sign FINE to sign, "I paid the fine for my ticket." The sign glossed as "GLASSES" also means: Gallaudet University, Thomas Gallaudet, and Moses.

A challenge faced by curriculum writers and ASL teachers when describing how to efficiently sign "What is your name?" -- is how to efficiently gloss the process of signing "NAME" while furrowing your eyebrows to create the concept of "what" non-manually.

(In other words: Use your face not your hands to create the meaning of "what?" and add it to the sign "NAME.")

Classrooms are not real life. Teachers use teacher-talk (or in our case, "teacher-signing") which is analogous (similar) to motherese.

In real life:
Deaf people typically do not sign "YOU WHAT NAME?"

Deaf people typically do not sign "YOU NAME WHAT?"

Deaf people do typically sign "YOU NAME?"-[while furrowing the eyebrows to create the concept of what]

The point here is that if we want ASL students to learn to sign like Deaf people then we need to stop using three signs to do the work of "two signs and a facial expression."

One approach to glossing "What is your name?" while emphasizing the importance of using facial expressions instead of unnecessary signs -- would be to lowercase the word "what" and attach it to the sign NAME.

For example: "YOU what-NAME?" (The lowercase what should not be signed but shown on your face as furrowed eyebrows.)

Or to help emphasize that we don't need to actually sign WHAT -- we could type: "YOU [what]-NAME?"

However, students usually don't take the time to ask "Why is the word 'what' lowercased?"

While there is no perfect approach to writing ASL and indicate the non-manual features in a way that can be typed easily -- an approach would be to gloss "What is your name?" as:
"YOU NAME-[what]?"

That way when students mistakenly choose to add a third sign (WHAT) to the other two signs "YOU NAME" (instead of just efficiently furrowing their eyebrows and not using a separate sign for WHAT) at least they will still be putting the "WH"-question at the end.

See: https://youtu.be/FHPszRvL9pg