The semiotic diversity of doing reference in a deaf signed language

Gabrielle Hodge,Benjamin D Anible,Lindsay N Ferrara

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2019.01.025

Abstract

This article describes how deaf signers of Auslan (a deaf signed language of Australia) coordinate fully conventionalised forms (such as lexical manual signs and English fingerspelling and/or mouthing) with more richly improvised semiotics (such as indicating verbs, pointing signs, depicting signs, visible surrogates and/or invisible surrogates) to identify and talk about referents of varying agency. Using twenty retellings of Frog, Where Are You? and twenty retellings of The Boy Who Cried Wolf archived in the Auslan Corpus, we analysed 4,699 tokens of referring expressions with respect to: (a) activation status; (b) semiotic form; and (c) animacy. Statistical analysis confirmed choice of strategy was most strongly motivated by activation status: new referents were expressed with more conventionalised forms (especially lexical manual signs and English mouthing), whereas maintained and reintroduced referents typically involved fewer and more richly improvised, context-dependent semiotics. However, animacy was also a motivating factor: humans and animals were often depicted via visible surrogates (not pointing signs), whereas inanimate referents favoured depicting signs and invisible surrogates. These findings highlight the role of animacy in signed language discourse and challenge the claim that informativeness decreases as cognitive saliency increases, while demonstrating the ‘pretend world’ indexicality of signed language use and the pluralistic complexity of face-to-face communication.

Highlights

By directing someone's attention to some other person or thing, we establish someone or something as a referent and offer a conceptualisation or perspective on them (Clark and Bangerter, 2004; Sidnell and Enfield, 2016)
Taking a comparative semiotic approach, we explore whether factors additional to information management influence patterns of referring expressions produced by deaf Auslan signers
Given the literature outlined in x1, we expected an interaction between phonological heaviness and the activation status of the referent, whereby introduced referents are expressed with more semiotic strategies, while maintained or reintroduced referents are expressed with fewer semiotic strategies

Summary

Introduction

By directing someone's attention to some other person or thing, we establish someone or something as a referent and offer a conceptualisation or perspective on them (Clark and Bangerter, 2004; Sidnell and Enfield, 2016). G. Hodge et al / Journal of Pragmatics 143 (2019) 33e53 their hand (or other body parts) to disambiguate context in situ and anchor their signed or spoken references to people, animals and things in the material or imagined world. Hodge et al / Journal of Pragmatics 143 (2019) 33e53 their hand (or other body parts) to disambiguate context in situ and anchor their signed or spoken references to people, animals and things in the material or imagined world They may produce enactments with or without more conventionalised semiotics, such as lexically encoded information, to demonstrate who did what to whom and how They may produce enactments with or without more conventionalised semiotics, such as lexically encoded information, to demonstrate who did what to whom and how (see e.g. Sherzer, 1973; Tannen, 1989; Clark and Gerrig, 1990; Haviland, 1993; Kita, 2003; Sidnell, 2006; D'Arcy, 2015 for spoken languages, and Metzger, 1995; Winston, 1991, 1992; Liddell, 2003; Cormier et al, 2013b; Cormier et al, 2015 for signed languages)

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Conclusion