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(jazzy music)
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VOICE INTERPRETER: Hello.
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My name is Peter Cook.
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I am an ASL -- American Sign Language -- storyteller and poet.
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I am also a professor at Columbia College, Chicago, the largest art and media
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college in the USA.
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Columbia offers more than 120 different programs of study, with majors ranging from
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film to dance, theater to visual arts, creative writing, and radio.
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Columbia also offers a major in American Sign Language/English Interpretation.
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At Columbia, we encourage students to make the world their classroom.
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In addition to their classroom studies, we ask them to engage with the world around them.
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The Columbia College Critical Encounters initiative puts important social justice issues
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in front of Columbia students, so that they can evaluate their freedoms and responsibilities
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in the world, as artists and scholars.
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The topic for this year's discussions
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is poverty and privilege.
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The word "poverty" poses some interesting challenges for users of ASL.
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The most common idea of poverty has to do with a lack of money, so the sign "poor"
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is often used as a common translation for the English word "poverty".
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The problem is that the concept of poverty in English can apply to imbalances of resources
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other than money, and the sign "poor" doesn't encompass these other ideas.
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For example, poverty can be a lack of access to things like fashion.
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It can also have to do with age, where you live, your religion, or even your language.
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See what I mean?
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The idea of poverty isn't adequately expressed through the sign "poor",
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and that's the problem.
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In ASL, the concepts of poverty and privilege are much more difficult to express concisely
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than they are in English.
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For instance, driving is often expressed as being permitted to drive or allowed to drive.
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The impact of those signs on people is different from understanding
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that driving is a privilege that some people have access to, and others do not.
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Because of linguistic differences, ASL users are often not equally engaged
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in these important discussions about social justice.
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That in itself is an example of poverty.
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New words come into languages through many different avenues.
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Signs in ASL are no different.
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Let me share with you my experience with the development of a new sign.
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In 1989, there was a conference called Deaf Way, which involved Deaf artists,
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scholars, and activists from all over the world.
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One of the meetings involved a group of international Deaf poets
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from countries like Italy, France, and Sweden,
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and was facilitated by Clayton Valli,
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an American Deaf poet.
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Much of the conversation focused on the sign for "poetry" that was used
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in each country's sign language.
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After considering each of the signs,
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Clayton Valli pointed out that none of the signs really grasped the concept
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of poetry as it exists in signed languages.
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The sign for "poetry" in ASL was based in the root sign for music,
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but Deaf poetry does not use rhyme and rhythm in the same way as poetry in spoken languages.
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The group began to offer up some ideas for a new sign that would adequately express
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the concept of signed poetry.
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After much discussion, we agreed on a sign that uses the root signs for "heart" and "express",
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meaning the expression of the poet's
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innermost ideas.
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And, believe it or not,
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that sign has become accepted all over the world.
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Through various media, a word needs to only appear in one publication
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for it to be coined and widely accepted.
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This project will allow us to do the same for ASL.
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(jazzy music)