Intelligibility of American Sign Language Dialogue in Popular Media

69 pagesThis thesis examines the intelligibility of American Sign Language (ASL) dialogue in contemporary movies and TV shows. ASL and Deaf people have historically been represented inaccurately onscreen by hearing actors with poor signing skills. In recent decades, however, this has changed for the better, with directors hiring fluent Deaf actors and ASL dialogue coaches. Still, there has never been a study quantifying how intelligible the ASL dialogue in contemporary media is to actual signers. Through an online survey for ASL signers, participants were shown 45 ASL dialogue clips from 9 different movies and TV shows. Participants rated how well they could understand the clips based on the actors’ ASL proficiency and the way the dialogue was filmed. Analysis of this data found that even in films with fluent Deaf actors and ASL dialogue coaches, the dialogue was often highly unintelligible, due to culturally ignorant framing and editing of actors’ signing. The film CODA (2021) was a notable exception, with comparatively well-filmed ASL. Based on feedback from survey participants and additional research, this thesis recommends that directors hire ASL cinematographers to supervise and guide the filming and editing of ASL dialogue, to ensure that the final product is intelligible for a signing audience