Eyebrows in ASL

I started this week with the initial goal to continue my study of high frequency signs in ASL and report back here with some of the cool ones that I learned. However, as I have found happens often throughout the self-learning process, that aim changed relatively quickly once I started getting into this week’s practice. When I was learning more in depth about question signs, I noticed that eyebrows actually play a huge part in communication. As I already knew, facial expressions are very important in signing, but what I wasn’t aware of was that this becomes especially clear when it comes to eyebrows and different types of questions. We all, at one point or another, have subconsciously raised our eyebrows in regular conversation, however in ASL, this action is very purposeful when specifically asking a yes or no question. And the same goes for furrowed eyebrows. Though typically, when I first think of this expression, I imagine it to be motivated by anger, in ASL, furrowed eyebrows are used when simply asking an open-ended or “wh-” question (who, what, when, where, why). Though this pretty much covers the basics of eyebrow facial expressions, one exception that I also found interesting was that when asking a rhetorical “wh-” question, eyebrows should actually be raised, not furrowed.