Classifiers
Classifiers help give context to a person, animal or
object by showing their demeanour and location and
motion.
PEOPLE
When retelling a story involving more than one person, we often use role-shift to
‘perform’ the conversation. It’s useful for showing the emotions and reactions of the
people involved in the conversation. However, if you need to show where they are (in
relation to you or others), their motion (speed of movement, standing, sitting, etc) or
their demeanour (unsteady, upright, and drunk) then you can use classifiers.
Example 1
hand-shape G
location
Example 2
hand-shape G and H (inverted)
movement
DETAIL
You may need to describe not only your position but also where your attention is
focused. (Are you looking, watching, reading etc)
Example 3
hand-shape V
eyes
Example 4
hand-shape V
eyes (continued)
CARS/ANIMALS ETC..
The same principle is used for the direction, location and motion of other things
around you to help give context to the environment that you are describing.
Example 5
hand-shape B
car
Example 6
hand-shape G
animal
(NB the handshapes above need to be given a body location, will show this during his
remarkable demonstrations!!!)
Deaf Solutions 3 © L2 Handout Information