Sign languages do not arise from thin air: rather, they emerge in communities where conventions are already in place for using gesture. Little research has considered how these conventions are retained and/or adapted as gestures are integrated into emerging sign language lexicons. Here we describe a set of five gestures that are used to convey negative meanings by both speakers and signers in a single community: the San Juan Quiahije municipality in Oaxaca, Mexico. We show that all of the form-meaning mappings present for non-signers are retained by signers as they integrate the gestures into their lexicon. Interestingly, additional meanings are mapped to the gesture forms by signers – a phenomenon that appears to originate with deaf signers in particular. In light of this evidence, we argue that accounts of ‘wholesale borrowing’ of gestures into emerging sign languages is overly simplistic: signers evidently adapt gestures as they integrate them into their emerging lexicons.
This article describes the types of signed names given and used by deaf users of Japanese Sign Language. Drawing from a dataset of 216 signed names, we identify and describe nine strategies for signed name formation. Notably, seven of these represent written Japanese surnames. We explain how language contact with written Japanese characters (kanji) and syllabograms (kana) gives rise to a distinctive set of naming strategies. We further discuss the culture of literacy in Japan that emphasizes the written forms of surnames and consider its influential role in Japanese deaf education when sustained contact between many deaf people made naming a central concern.
When referring to non-present entities, speakers and signers can select from a range of different strategies to create expressions that range from extremely concise to highly elaborate. This design of referring expressions is based partly on the availability of contextual information that can aid addressee understanding. In the small signing community of Providence Island, signers’ heavy reliance on extra-linguistic information has led to their language being labelled as context-dependent (Washabaugh, de Santis & Woodward 1978). This study investigates the semiotic strategies that deaf signers in Providence Island use to introduce non-present third person referents, and examines how signers optimise specificity and minimise ambiguity by drawing on shared context. We examined first introductions to non-present people in spontaneous dyadic conversations between deaf signers and analysed the semiotic strategies used. We found that signers built referring expressions using the same strategies found in other sign languages, yet designed expressions that made use of contextual knowledge shared through community membership, such as geography, local spoken languages and traits of fellow islanders. Our signers also used strategies described as unusual or unattested in other sign languages, such as unframed constructed action sequences and stand-alone mouthings. This study deepens our understanding of context dependence by providing examples of how context is drawn upon by communities with high degrees of shared knowledge. Our results call into question the classification of sign languages as context-dependent or context-independent and highlights the differences in data collection across communities and the resulting limitations of cross-linguistic comparisons.
[opening paragraph] Human communication is composite (e.g., Clark 2016; Enfield 2009; Ferrara and Hodge 2018; Holler and Levinson 2019). It involves the voice, face, hands, and rest of the body. It integrates categorical elements and gradient ones; highly conventional and ad hoc forms; arbitrary symbols and motivated signals. This is true of spoken communication and it is true—in equal measure—of signed communication. Both speakers and signers stitch these different types of components into a seamless whole. Some of these components are historically considered a core part of language, others marginal, and still others are thought to be something else entirely—gestural, expressive, paralinguistic (for discussion, see, e.g., Dingemanse 2018; Goldin-Meadow and Brentari 2017; Müller 2018). Regardless of whether one considers the language/ non-language divide fundamental, fuzzy, or fictitious, there is widespread agreement that certain communicative phenomena haunt the boundaries in ways that prove revealing. Chief among these are cases where both speakers and signers make use of the same bodily raw material, but in putatively very different ways: flashes and furrows of the brow; imitations of actions; depictions of size, shape, and arrangement. Here, we analyze one of these similar- looking forms in detail: pointing. The case of pointing shows, first, how a single semiotic tool can be put to many uses and, second, how speakers and signers use this tool in some ways that are similar and other ways that are different.
Pointing with the chin is a practice attested worldwide: it is an effective and highly recognizable device for re-orienting the attention of the addressee. For the chin point to be observed, the addressee must attend carefully to the movements of the sender’s head. This demand comes into conflict with the politeness norms of many cultures, since these often require conversationalists to avoid meeting the gaze of their interlocutor, and can require them to look away from their interlocutor’s face and head. In this paper we explore how the chin point is successfully used in just such a culture, among the Chatino indigenous group of Oaxaca, Mexico. We analyze interactions between multiple dyads of Chatino speakers, examining how senders invite visual attention to the pointing gesture, and how addressees signal that attention, while both participants avoid stretches of mutual gaze. We find that in the Chatino context, the senior (or higher-status) party to the conversation is highly consistent in training their gaze away from their interlocutor. This allows their interlocutor to give visual attention to their face without the risk of meeting the gaze of a higher-status sender, and facilitates close attention to head movements including the chin point.Abstracts in Spanish and Quiahije Chatino are published as appendices.Se incluyen como apéndices resúmenes en español y en el chatino de San Juan Quiahije.SonG ktyiC reC inH, ngyaqC skaE ktyiC noE ndaH sonB naF ngaJ noI ngyaqC loE ktyiC reC, ngyaqC ranF chaqE xlyaK qoE chaqF jnyaJ noA ndywiqA renqA KchinA KyqyaC.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.