Social meanings of linguistic variation in BISINDO (Indonesian Sign Language)

Palfreyman, Nick

doi:10.1075/aplv.00008.pal

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 44 publications

(31 reference statements)

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“…Deaf people who support Scottish independence wonder if the term will be replaced by Scottish Sign Language in the future. Dialogue on language delineation can be informed by approaches including linguistic typology, variationist sociolinguistics, perceptual dialectology and studies of (c)overt statements related to linguistic identity (as in Palfreyman, 2020), and building the metalinguistic awareness of language users is of considerable importance.…”

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confidence: 99%

Lumping and splitting: Sign language delineation and ideologies of linguistic differentiation

Palfreyman

Schembri

2022

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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The terms 'lumper' and 'splitter' have long been used to describe opposing approaches to taxonomy in various fields, such as ethnobiology: on encountering a set of closely related species, splitters name a greater number of distinctions in the set than lumpers (Berlin et al., 1981). Linguists use these terms to describe contrasting tendencies among those documenting and delineating languages (Heine & Nurse, 2000, p. 3): the splitter typically regards varieties as distinct languages, while the lumper tends to treat those varieties as, for example, dialects of the same language.But splitting and lumping are tendencies that lie on the surface and refer to deeper, underlying issues. As with spoken languages, the discourse on delineating and naming signed languages is flavoured by a fundamental quandary: multiple types of linguistic evidence provide few definitive or 'objective' answers to thorny questions about where one language finishes and another one starts, which are often informed by language ideologies and settled in sociopolitical contexts. Such questions are confounded by the ongoing lack of available definitions around terms as basic and fundamental as 'language' (Cysouw & Good, 2013).Attempts to understand the relationships between sign language varieties have focussed mostly on lexical comparison (e.g.

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Lumping and splitting: Sign language delineation and ideologies of linguistic differentiation

Palfreyman

Schembri

2022

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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“…Consider the following example from an investigation of the social meanings of variation in BISINDO (Indonesian Sign Language; Palfreyman, 2020 ; see Figure 11 ). Here, a young deaf signer Ambar is talking to a deaf friend about her experiences of trying different professions before finding a suitable job.…”

Section: Iconicity As Signalled By Depicting Indicating And/or Descri...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The two variants impart different social meanings: TIDAK-BISA is a suppletive manual sign that is commonly used by younger deaf signers from the Solo (Central Java) region, whereas the variant TIDAK + mouthing ‘ tidak bisa ’ has its origins in the manual gestures and Indonesian mouthings used by hearing non-signing speakers. There is an implicit BISINDO ideology that ‘the suppletive variant is more “deaf” than the mouthed predicate construction, which is more “hearing” because of its gestural associations’ ( Palfreyman, 2020 : 15).…”

Section: Iconicity As Signalled By Depicting Indicating And/or Descri...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“… (A) English translation of Ambar’s composite utterances (adapted from Palfreyman (2020) : 104 and reproduced with permission from the author and John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, https://www.benjamins.com/catalog/aplv ). (B) Two sign variants for negating the predicate ‘can’ recreated by Ambar (adapted from Palfreyman, 2020 : 105 and reproduced with permission from the author and John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, https://www.benjamins.com/catalog/aplv ). …”

Section: Iconicity As Signalled By Depicting Indicating And/or Descri...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Iconicity as Multimodal, Polysemiotic, and Plurifunctional

Hodge

Ferrara

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Investigations of iconicity in language, whereby interactants coordinate meaningful bodily actions to create resemblances, are prevalent across the human communication sciences. However, when it comes to analysing and comparing iconicity across different interactions (e.g., deaf, deafblind, hearing) and modes of communication (e.g., manual signs, speech, writing), it is not always clear we are looking at the same thing. For example, tokens of spoken ideophones and manual depicting actions may both be analysed as iconic forms. Yet spoken ideophones may signal depictive and descriptive qualities via speech, while manual actions may signal depictive, descriptive, and indexical qualities via the shape, movement, and placement of the hands in space. Furthermore, each may co-occur with other semiotics articulated with the face, hands, and body within composite utterances. The paradigm of iconicity as a single property is too broad and coarse for comparative semiotics, as important details necessary for understanding the range of human communicative potentialities may be masked. Here, we draw on semiotic approaches to language and communication, including the model of language as signalled via describing, indicating and/or depicting and the notion of non-referential indexicality, to illustrate the multidimensionality of iconicity in co-present interactions. This builds on our earlier proposal for analysing how different methods of semiotic signalling are combined in multimodal language use. We discuss some implications for the language and communication sciences and explain how this approach may inform a theory of biosemiotics.

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“…In many countries, variation in sign languages is based on varieties used in deaf schools (e.g., Quinn, 2010). Variation has been associated with varying naming practices for sign languages and varieties (Palfreyman, 2020a(Palfreyman, , 2020b). An example is the use of the name BISINDO (Indonesian Sign Language) to cover extensive variation in the country (= lumping) versus identifying several sign languages in the country (= splitting), as Woodward has done for eg.…”

Section: Themes In Sign Language Sociolinguisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emergence and evolutions: Introducing sign language sociolinguistics

Kusters

Lucas

2022

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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The sociolinguistics of sign languages parallels as well as complements the sociolinguistics of spoken languages. All of the key areas of sociolinguistics, such as multilingualism, language contact, variation, and language attitudes-are of immediate relevance to sign languages. At the same time, sign language researchers using a range of data sources and methods (e.g., sign language corpora, linguistic elicitation, and linguistic ethnography) have showed that the unique natures and features of sign languages allow us to look at all these areas from a different vantage point. First, deficit perspectives on deafness serve to sharply distinguish the reality of sign languages from that of spoken languages. The linguistic status of sign languages has been long contested, and certain forms of signing are still labeled "nonlanguage." The delineation and differentiation of sign languages, and of sign languages from other signing practices (e.g., gesturing, home sign) has therefore been a key issue. Second, sign languages are used by both deaf and hearing people, in contexts where spoken/written languages, and increasingly also other sign languages are in use, leading to complex multimodal forms of signspoken, sign-written, and sign-sign language contact, and to hierarchical constellations of language attitudes and This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Social meanings of linguistic variation in BISINDO (Indonesian Sign Language)

Cited by 10 publications

References 44 publications

Lumping and splitting: Sign language delineation and ideologies of linguistic differentiation

Lumping and splitting: Sign language delineation and ideologies of linguistic differentiation

Iconicity as Multimodal, Polysemiotic, and Plurifunctional

Emergence and evolutions: Introducing sign language sociolinguistics

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