The sign language interpreter for Mayor de Blasio's press conference was deaf. How does that work?

Jonathan Lamberton
(Image credit: (YouTube))

At Mayor Bill de Blasio's press conference on the Ebola situation in NYC, the American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter attracted a lot of attention. Viewers commented on his animated facial expressions, posted screenshots, and joked about what he might really be saying. The same thing happened when the interpreter for a press conference about Hurricane Sandy was televised. As we explained then, facial expressions are an important part of ASL grammar. Eyebrow movements convey syntactic information, mouth movements mark adverbial content, and other body and face movements organize the discourse as a whole. Interpreters are not animated because they are dramatic or energetic, but because sign language is visual.

There was something different about the interpreting situation at this press conference that people also noticed: the interpreter seemed to be conversing with another signer in the audience. Was he just chatting along, ignoring the speech? Was he a fake?

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Arika Okrent

Arika Okrent is editor-at-large at TheWeek.com and a frequent contributor to Mental Floss. She is the author of In the Land of Invented Languages, a history of the attempt to build a better language. She holds a doctorate in linguistics and a first-level certification in Klingon. Follow her on Twitter.