I have several ongoing projects investigating the use of role shift how signers use their eye gaze and other non-manual articulators - such as facial expression - to structure interaction and discourse, and index differing classes of signs.
Role shift with verbs of depiction My dissertation examines the interaction between character role shift and the verb system of American Sign Language (ASL). Character role shift (or constructed action) refers to the use of a signer’s own body to enact the behavior and experience of a character in their narrative – marked by shifted eye gaze or torso, and changed facial expression.
Using data collected from deaf signers of ASL, I argue that what initially looks like a unified role shift phenomenon actually encompasses two distinct types of shifts – to enact a character or merely index a vantage point – that can be distinguished based on form and distributional requirements.
Waller (2023): Poster presented at LSA 2023 on my dissertation research
Eye gaze in interaction and discourse I am working with Laura Horton on a project from her field work investigating the use of eye gaze in the narratives of a young signer in Nebaj, Guatemala.
Horton & Waller (2022): Poster presented at BUCLD 47
My current postdoctoral work examines how artificial intelligence could be leveraged to develop new technologies.
Sign Language Anonymization we are testing a new tool using mediapipe to hide signer's identity in ASL videos while mantaining the clarity of the message content.
Luna et al. (2023) Evaluation of anonymized sign language videos with MediaPipe.
Captioning I have been involved in multiple projects for improving captions for deaf/hh viewers
Pidathala et al. (2023) Live captions in virtual reality.
Waller et al. (2016) Evaluation of automatic caption segmentation.