[lazyweb] Searching a social network for [tact]

[trochee]

caracola starts a discussion that includes the statement "ASL has no sign for tact". This statement struck me as suspiciously snowclone-ish, and I'm curious if anybody might know about such a sign in ASL.

Some of my friends here might have resources that have more information. Any ideas of where to look? Anybody know the sign?

To complete my jargon and topic list: social networks (how), sign language (what), and snowclones (why)!

Comments

[tulip-tree.livejournal.com]

yeah, I figured out after I posted that you knew the Deaf/deaf thing. (I hadn't read the intervening comments which were posted while I wrote mine... your original post just talked about ASL, so I didn't want to start using terminology that might not be familiar. I agree that Deaf is the relevant topic here.)

The rest of your comment (about directness, etc) in general is really interesting. I would never had thought of putting American English and Japanese near each other in that regard, but I can see that that could be the case in comparison with other languages/cultures. (My limited impressions of Japanese are colored by examples in the form of funny stories, such as A's mom telling him, in varying degrees of forcefulness as he ignored her requests, that "the trash has an inclination to be outside," "the trash would really like to be outside" etc.) Which is not to say that Americans are very direct - just that the Japanese can be even more indirect. :)

Talking to A about this just now... he observes that Chinese people tend to be much more blunt about stating observations, but not about opinions, whereas Americans tend to state opinions without qualification.

Hope you don't mind the tangent... this is fascinating (not to mention far more interesting than the experiments I'm trying to run. :) )