Abstract
ABSTRACTDrawing on the work of Jean-François Lyotard and Mikhail Bakhtin, this study analyzes personal narratives created and performed in American Sign Language (ASL) by three Deaf college students. These narratives can be viewed as “boundary phenomena” in that they reflect themes common to the Deaf oral tradition, yet were deliberately poetically created, extensively rehearsed and publicly performed, based on fact, and created with a specific rhetorical purpose. The texts are examined for literary features and themes, as well as for the key elements of performance and social-cultural context. Discussion centers on the ways in which students' individual styles emerged from exposure to the thematic and stylistic techniques of professional Deaf artists. (American Sign Language, personal narrative, narrative pragmatics, speech genres, intertextuality)
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