1

THEORETICAL REVIEW
A. Sign language.
Sign language use hand, face or other body movements in three-dimensional
space as the physical means of communication.
Sign language not only used by the people with disability (physical impairment)
but also by the normal people (non-physical impairment). Thus, there are
categorizations of sign language; a sign language that used by normal people who
combine sign with or without speech that emerge by own peoples culture to
communicate, and a sign language which used to convey the meaning through the signs
to communicate for the people who has disability or impairment.
1. Sign language (non-physical impairment).
Normal people also use sign language such as Gestures and Signs toward
the language. Gesture is a variety of body movements; specifically the way
people speak with involving the organ of the body such as face, hands, and
posture of the body as an alternative way to portray the meaning. Moreover, In
Gesture, we use it to communicate a variety of types of messages, as, for the
example in;
1.1

Gestures without speech.

Commanding or request a person to come by moving hands

directed to your own body. Answering yes/no/dont know by moving the
head horizontally for negative or vertically for affirmative .Greeting and
farewell to someone which means hello and goodbye by moving hands
intended to the person or a Smile gesture to express having closeness.
Insulting, by sticking out of the tongue that often used by children. Refer
something to choose by pointing finger (That one, this one, self, and
other). These kinds of gestures are called type of iconic gesture. Iconic
gesture is visual representation of body movements to present intended
referential meaning. Moreover, gesture is universal. Because world has
many dissimilarity of culture.
1.2

Gestures with speech.

When people talk, sometimes they tend to use gestures. Furthermore,

western people call this type Beat Gesture. In making beats, the people
who talk with a gesture will move their hands up and down or back and
forth based to her/his nature culture. However, this type of gesture has an
iconic sign function. According to McNeill, beat gesture is basically to
emphasize the discourse function of concurrent speech which means beats
do not add to the content of a description or story but rather serve to
emphasize the intended utterance i.e. the introduction of new characters,
the setting of a scene, the occurrence of some event, mentioning of the
significant subject or direct object, etc.

2. Sign language (physical impairment).

In this part of sign language, it has two types of sign language. The first
type is sign language which represents words by spelling or speech. And the
second is an independent sign language.
2.1 S.L Representing spelling or speech
There are two systems of finger spelling in S.L i.e. both one and
two-hand system Finger Spelling (Figure 2.1 1 and Figure 2.1 - 2)

(Figure 2.1 1. American Sign Language F.S)

(Figure 2.1 2. British Sign language F.S)

This type of sign language above represents words by spelling them

out in terms of individual signs, where each sign represents a letter of the
alphabet. Thus, words and entire sentences are communicated in this
letter-by-letter method.
Moreover, there is also other difference system i.e. S.O.L (Sign
Ordinary Language), the systems which use whole signs for each speech
words or meaningful word part (morpheme). For example, lets take a
word of irregular verb taken this word there would be one whole sign
for take and another sign for the future tense. And for sentence the seat
will taken tomorrow by people would have a sign for each English
morpheme in that sentence, signed in the same order as the spoken
sentence;
The + Seat + PLURAL + will + take + FUTURE + tomorrow + by + people + PLURAL.

The word taken has a separate sign for the root take and a
separate sign for the suffix marking of future tense.
The advantage of this system is the learner will have knowledge of
the syntax and vocabulary of the ordinary language as well. But, despite of
its advantage, S.O.L suffer a serious disadvantage i.e. Deaf signer
generally do not like it, because they find it more cumbersome and less
natural to use that a sign language that has evolved through extensive use
in the deaf community.
2.2 Independent sign language.
Independent S.L is a sign language which has its own contextual i.e.
sign language that has its own grammar and syntax based on historical origins

and culture, such as A.S.L, B.S.L and C.S.L, they all are have distinctive
in terms of characteristic of S.L. Henceforth, S.L can only understandable
by majority of nation signer.
2.2.1

Some Characteristic of Independent S.L

The signs of independent sign language can be broken down
into three basic components;
- Hand configuration
How the hand is formed?
- Place of articulation
Where is the hand formed?
- Movements
How the hand moves?

2.2.2

The syntax of independent sign language.

I.S.L also has rules on how a sign is composed and how they
are presented in a proper communication through sign language.
First, In Sign language for indexing meaning they are not linear
sequence but three-dimensional creations. Means, that each sign are
created based on proper configuration, articulation, and movements
inside the space that allow the exact combination of meanings, and
there are also the simultaneous blending of a number of meaning
elements that cannot be produced linearly. Hence, as a result, in
signed sentence can be produced quickly without much effort as like
finger spelling alphabet.
Second, in presented sentence through sign, it same as the
word order, for example; I like you then that would be present each
individual sign of each individual word of the sentence according to
it sequence, but as said before, there are a number of meaning that is
not produced or created simultaneously in terms of three
dimensional creation.
The third is, there is also a variation of sign in terms of time
such as present, past, future tense. For example, in B.S.L for word
win the sign will show the index finger and make a circle
movement for the form a present in terms of time, while for the past
time, the hand will make a pattern like a duck lip and placed in front
of the left chest because it moved by the right hand.
And the last one is, apportionment of space in producing
grammatical sentences in S.L, such as a facial movement and
arms/shoulder movement will influence a meaning toward every
individual sign.