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The American Sign Language and Facial Expressions

Years ago when I was still a small girl, mother always shouted to me whenever I made faces, she would shout ‘’don’t make faces, otherwise your face will stay like that’’, that’s why, and I’m being perfectly honest, that learning the ASL, the American Sign Language was really hard for me, because it all depended on facial expressions, and I was very afraid to make any certain face, since I always thought that the expression I make will last forever, as my mom used to tell me.

It wasn’t only about making facial expressions, but also touching oneself, but that’s a whole another story, I will focus on the making facial expression part in this article, facial expression as an important tool of interaction in the American Sign Language.

And an FYI, there is nothing called a Universal Sign Language, not to this date at least, there is Mexican, American, Japanese, and Chinese Sign Languages and so on, and for this article, I will focus on ASL and the facial expression associated with it.

When doing Facial expression with doing NMM, Non-Manual Markers, which are gestures that are made without using the hands to send a certain message, includes the following actions:

1) Raising the shoulders.

2) Shaking the head.

3) The head tilt

4) Nodding the head.

Most people already use sign language without knowing, for example:

If you are a grown up, and you are sitting with a bunch of little children, and you are in charge of them when you are out, if they are making noise and jumping around, you order them to be quiet without saying it, you just use a facial expression that delivers the meaning you want to them, without using words, maybe add your finger in front of the mouth to stress the order.

If you don’t believe this, check this one out, when you want to be more serious when trying to make them quiet , you usually widen your eyes to give your face a more serious look, maybe adding the index in front of the mouth to give the ‘’hush’’ order, and put your hands on your hip. Then they will surely be quiet and understand the order.

That was only a small example of facial expression in the American Sign Language, and each expression can have more than one meaning, depending on the conversation itself, that’s why it’s important to know every expression and its possible meanings. And be sure and insured, ASL facial expression will not change the way you look, and facial expressions or as mothers say, making faces, they don’t last forever, they didn’t change me, so I’m sure it won’t do anything to you as well