ICONICITY AND VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS IN CHILDRENS’ NARRATIVE

Abstract


 
 
 
 The study examines the creation of a childrens’ visual book based on the reading of an indigenous text story. In particular, it demonstrates that the ratio of labial versus nasal sounds in a text predicts a difference in its meanings, as it is perceived by its readers, signers and non-signers. Texts that have a relatively high frequency of labial sounds are more likely to express high activation, whereas a relatively high frequency of nasal sounds indicates a low activation. These sounds seem to relate to specific mental representations, which are mapped to particular handshapes across sign languages. Thus, the study suggests that the higher frequency of specific phonemes may connect to certain signed representations, which the design of children’s picturebook can take into consideration, since the two- dimensional image can relate to the three-dimensional materialisation of SLs and their constructs. Keywords: picturebook, visual image, Sign Language, indigenous narrative, iconicity.