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Analysing Sign Language Poetry
... Viena pagrindinių GK poezijos raiškos priemonių, kurią pasitelkus ir kuriamas minėtas žodinėms kalboms būdingas poetinis rimas 9 , kuri taip pat atlieka ir estetinės bei emocinės raiškos funkcijas -kartojimas. GK poezijos tyrėjai (Klima, Bellugi 1979, Sutton-Spence 2005 Taip pat GK poezijos kūriniams itin svarbus gestų simetriškumas -simetriškas rankų 11 (dvirankiuose gestuose) judėjimas viena kitos atžvilgiu (Danielius 2004). Kaip teigia Sutton-Spence (2005), sąmoningas GK poetų pasirinkimas 12 kūrinį perteikti viena ar dviem rankomis, tikslingai įtraukiant simetriškumą, pusiausvyrą, ar tikslingai jų vengiant, -tai įrankis, padedantis sukurti norimą įspūdį žiūrovui. ...
... GK poezijos tyrėjai (Klima, Bellugi 1979, Sutton-Spence 2005 Taip pat GK poezijos kūriniams itin svarbus gestų simetriškumas -simetriškas rankų 11 (dvirankiuose gestuose) judėjimas viena kitos atžvilgiu (Danielius 2004). Kaip teigia Sutton-Spence (2005), sąmoningas GK poetų pasirinkimas 12 kūrinį perteikti viena ar dviem rankomis, tikslingai įtraukiant simetriškumą, pusiausvyrą, ar tikslingai jų vengiant, -tai įrankis, padedantis sukurti norimą įspūdį žiūrovui. Dažniausiai tyrėjų (Sutton-Spence 2005, Sutton-Spence, Kaneko 2017 ir kt.) apžvelgiami trys simetrijos tipai: vertikali, horizontali simetrija ir simetrija pirmyn-atgal (angl. ...
... išskiria tris kartojimų GK poezijos kūriniuose tipus: plaštakų formų, judėjimo (judesio) ir erdvės, kurioje išdėstomi gestai. Kaip teigiaSutton-Spence (2005), "[b]eveik visi gestų kalbos poezijos kūrinių tyrimai atskleidžia plaštakos formų ypatybes. Kartais jos naudojamos tiesiog dėl vizualaus įspūdžio" (Sutton-Spence 2005: 26), neretai kurtieji tam tikrų plaštakos formų kartojimus pasitelkia ir siekdami kurti konotacinę -papildomą, emocinio turinio reikšmę. ...
In order to solve issues in sign language linguistics, address matters pertaining to maintaining high quality of sign language (SL) translation, contribute to dispelling misconceptions about SL and deaf people, and raise awareness and understand of the deaf community heritage, this article, for the first time in a Lithuanian scientific journal, discusses authentic poetry in Lithuanian Sign Language (LSL) and inherent metaphors that are created by using the phonological parameter – location. The study covered in this article is twofold, involving both the micro-level analysis of metaphors in terms of location as a sub-lexical feature and the macro-level analysis of the poetic context. Cognitive theories underlie research of metaphors in sign language poetry in a range of sign languages. The study follows this practice. In view of the abovementioned reasons, this piece of research is new and relevant to Lithuania. The article covers qualitative analysis of 10 pieces of LSL poetry. The analysis employs ELAN software widely used in sign language research. The target is to examine how specific types of location are used for the creation of metaphors in LSL poetry and what metaphors are created. The results of the study show that LSL poetry employs a range of locations resulting in a host of metaphors created by using classifier signs and by modifying the location of the established signs. The study also reveals that LSL poetry mostly tends to create reference metaphors indicating status and power. As the study shows, LSL poets metaphorically encode status by encoding another meaning in the same sign, which results in creating double metaphors. The metaphor of identity has been determined to consist of chest signing. Notably, the poetic context has revealed that the latter metaphor can also be identified as a metaphor of life. The study goes on to note that deaf poets create metaphors related to the importance of various phenomena, significance of the lyrical subject. Notably, the study has allowed detecting locations never mentioned in previous SL research as used for the creation of metaphors. For instance, previous SL research fails to cover temporal metaphors expressed by signing in central and peripheral areas and attitudinal metaphors represented by signing near the eye. The study has also detected a sign that can be identified as a metaphor of death and that is absent in previous SL research.
... It excludes a host of non-Western cultural traditions such as Indian kathakali, Hawai'ian hula, or Japanese butoh. Sign language poetry is another form of expressive movement [4] that by nature involves no sound [5]. Finally, codified movement systems like gymnastics or figure skating are typically classed as "sport" but are close cousins to dance. ...
Defining “dance” is challenging, because many distinct classes of human movement may be considered dance in a broad sense. Although the most obvious category is rhythmic dancing to a musical beat, other categories of expressive movement such as dance improvisation, pantomime, tai chi, or Japanese butoh suggest that a more inclusive conception of human dance is needed. Here we propose that a specific type of conscious awareness plays an overarching role in most forms of expressive movement and can be used to define dance (in the broad sense). We can briefly summarize this broader notion of dance as “mindful movement.” However, to make this conception explicit and testable, we need an empirically verifiable characterization of “mindful movement.” We propose such a characterization in terms of predictive coding and procedural learning theory: mindful movement involves a “suspension” of automatization. When first learning a new motor skill, we are highly conscious of our movements, and this is reflected in neural activation patterns. As skill increases, automatization and overlearning occurs, involving a progressive suppression of conscious awareness. Overlearned, habitual movement patterns become mostly unconscious, entering consciousness only when mistakes or surprising outcomes occur. In mindful movement, this automatization process is essentially inverted or suspended, reactivating previously unconscious details of movement in the conscious workspace, and crucially enabling a renewed aesthetic attention to such details. This wider perspective on dance has important implications for potential animal analogs of human dance and leads to multiple lines of experimental exploration.
... Source: CCSTELAL (2010), ASL Content Standards (2018, p. 44).The verbal and visual nature of SLs introduces a new concept of text, the signed text, based on past and modern uses by its native signers (deaf and hearing) (CHRISTIE,WILKINS, 1997;CZUBEK, 2006;BYRNE, 2016): video recorded (without physical contact) or live (with physical contact) (e.g., in face-to-face settings, online, films) as well as static, such as SL in printed books, drawings and other. In these texts, SL turns into an academic subject and as such, its literacy involves the comprehension of their linguistic and conceptual aspects and demands (see:KANEKO, MESCH, 2013;MIRZOEFF, 1995;SUTTON-SPENCE 2005; SUTTON-SPENCE, NAPOLI, 2010) and the ability to use it in an accurate and coherent way 8 . The act of reading diverse signed texts depends on both sign decoding and linguistic comprehension (the semantic processing of SL). ...
The Sign Language curriculum is a contemporary development which few countries have officially implemented to teach a national standard Sign Language as a first language (L1) and/or mother tongue in the school grades. In these, Sign Language is a mandatory unit, which the deaf child needs to study and develop metalinguistically, as is the case in learning spoken languages as L1. A Sign Language as a metalanguage also means that the curriculum teaches explicit linguistic knowledge for the child to understand gradually how SL functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when attending the language. In other words, the Sign Language curriculum addresses the importance of developing the child’s Sign Language literacy. Traditionally, literacy is linked to reading and writing and for its learning the language curriculum sets five essential early literacy components: comprehension, phonological awareness, phonics, print convention knowledge and fluency. The paper discusses these components in support of Sign Language literacy as a verbal (non-print) form of literacy, based on a documental study among the Sign Language and indigenous curriculum.
... While research on the expressive qualities of gestures in traditional musical settings has shown a clear link between body movements and emotional intentions, it is not yet clear how translated signed songs can be expressive of musical meaning and emotion, nor how these are interpreted by Deaf and hearing audiences. Maler (2013) found that signers who translate English lyrics into ASL represent musical features by altering the rhythm and signing space for existing lexicalized signs (Klima & Bellugi, 1989;MacFarlane & Morford, 2003;Schick, 1990;Supalla, 1986) and by creating new ''productive musical signs'' that fuse with emotive gestures (Godøy, Haga, & Jensenius, 2006;Johnston & Schembri, 2007;Sutton-Spence, Ladd, & Rudd, 2005). She argues that signs in a translated song are modified for specifically musical reasons, and rely on the presence of music, be it ''heard, felt, or assumed'' (Maler, 2013, p. 7). ...
This study investigated how signed performances express musical meaning and emotions. Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing (HoH), and hearing participants watched eight translated signed songs and eight signed lyrics with no influence of music. The participants rated these videos on several emotional and movement dimensions. Even though the videos did not have audible sounds, hearing participants perceived the signed songs as more musical than the signed lyrics. Deaf/HoH participants perceived both types of videos as equally musical, suggesting a different conception of what it means for movement to be musical. We also found that participants’ ratings of spatial height, vertical direction, size, tempo, and fluency related to the performer’s intended emotion and participants’ ratings of valence/arousal. For Deaf/HoH participants, accuracy at identifying emotional intentions was predicted by focusing more on facial expressions than arm movements. Together, these findings add to our understanding of how audience members attend to and derive meaning from different characteristics of movement in performative contexts.
... Such features are more integrated in embodied songs than their acoustic counterparts because they are performed simultaneously, by one individual, and draw on the established, expressive lexicon of sign languages. For more detailed discussion of sign language specific elements in song-signing (see Maler, 2013Maler, , 2015 as well as overlapping work on sign poetry by Mirzoeff (1995), Blondel and Miller (2001), Russo et al. (2001), and Sutton- Spence (2005). ...
Embodied song practices involve the transformation of songs from the acoustic modality into an embodied-visual form, to increase meaningful access for d/Deaf audiences. This goes beyond the translation of lyrics, by combining poetic sign language with other bodily movements to embody the para-linguistic expressive and musical features that enhance the message of a song. To date, the limited research into this phenomenon has focussed on linguistic features and interactions with rhythm. The relationship between bodily actions and music has not been probed beyond an assumed implication of conformance. However, as the primary objective is to communicate equivalent meanings, the ways that the acoustic and embodied-visual signals relate to each other should reveal something about underlying conceptual agreement. This paper draws together a range of pertinent theories from within a grounded cognition framework including semiotics, analogy mapping and cross-modal correspondences. These theories are applied to embodiment strategies used by prominent d/Deaf and hearing Dutch practitioners, to unpack the relationship between acoustic songs, their embodied representations, and their broader conceptual and affective meanings. This leads to the proposition that meaning primarily arises through shared patterns of internal relations across a range of amodal and cross-modal features with an emphasis on dynamic qualities. These analogous patterns can inform metaphorical interpretations and trigger shared emotional responses. This exploratory survey offers insights into the nature of cross-modal and embodied meaning-making, as a jumping-off point for further research.
... Furthermore, non-Libras signs were selected considering the phenomenon of neologism in SL poetry (cf. Sutton-Spence, 2005), which allows the borrowing of signs from other SLs so as to facilitate the deployment of signing (see below the poem Water). ...
Concrete poetry creates meaning by relying primarily on visual iconicity likewise sign languages (SLs). As they are visual-gestural languages, their modality allows a more transparent relation between the form of the sign and its meaning. Due to this common characteristic, the paper introduces the construction of SL literary material on the basis of the visual stimuli (mainly written) of concrete poetry. In this process, both languages (written and signed) are equal, since the reconstruction of the original text requires the close reading of their grammar and literary traditions.
Keywords: concrete poetry; sign language; philology.
... For consistency, we use "deafhood" even though Ladd (2003) capitalised the original term. 2 "Signed literary texts" refers to a body of creative signing with deliberately artistic use of language which can be differentiated from daily sign language usage. The study of signed language literature has been an established field of research since the 1980s (Klima and Bellugi 1979, Sutton-Spence 2005, Bauman, Nelson and Rose 2006, Nathan Lerner and Feigel 2009, Sutton-Spence and Kaneko 2016, and documentation of SASL literature has emerged over the last 20 years (Baker 2017, Morgan andKaneko 2018, Sutton-Spence andKaneko, in press). languages, stipulated by William Stokoe's (1960) publication on the structure of ASL. ...
In this paper we observe how deaf narrative identity (identities) emerge in creative SASL texts. We first identify how difficulties in establishing deaf cultural identities in the hearing-dominant world are represented in the ‘Man Against Monster’ plot (Booker 2004) commonly employed in sign language narrative. Then we use de Certeau (1984)’s notion of ‘place versus space’ and Heap (2003)’s notion of Sign-deaf space (plus our own term of mediated Sign-speak space) to explore how deaf artists transform the Monster (i.e. oppressing hearing place) into Deafhood and deaf space, which leads to the celebration of sign language and deaf culture. We also demonstrate how the recent notion of sensescape, coined by Rosen (2018), can be used to reinterpret our own approach to deaf narrative identity. The Monster in deaf stories can be understood not only in terms of the audist ideology but also in terms of different sensory orientations between deaf and hearing characters.
Creative texts provide a wealth of opportunities to explore how narrative identities are constructed. In fictional stories, deaf narrators step back from being themselves and extract the essence of their shared experience and sublimate it into a search for Deafhood which appeals to the deaf community. Various notions developed within the field of deaf studies, such as Deafhood, deaf space and deaf geographies, are useful in (re-)interpreting existing texts and shedding a new light on them.
... 65 Sign languages, similarly to spoken ones, use conventional and arbitrary signs that can express abstract or metaphorical concepts -an example of which is sign language poetry (e.g. Sutton-Spence, 2005). Similarly to speech, they have a combinatorial structure at the level of morphology, syntax and even "phonology"; hence, also the duality of patterning. ...
... 11 Sign languages, similarly to spoken ones, use conventional and arbitrary signs that can express any abstract or metaphorical concept -an example of which is sign language poetry (e.g. Sutton-Spence 2005). Similarly to speech, they have a combinatorial structure at the level of morphology, syntax and even "phonology"; hence, the duality of patterning is present as well. ...
In our paper we review the gestural primacy hypotheses in languageevolution, starting with the discussion of the historical advocates of this ap-proach and concluding with the contemporary arguments, derived from empiricalresearch in various fields of study. Assessing the strengths and weaknesses ofthe gestural scenarios we point to their main problem, namely their inability toaccount for the transition from a mainly visual to a mainly vocal modality (the socalled “modality transition problem”). Subsequently, we discuss several potentialsolutions to this problem, and arrive at a conclusion that the most satisfyingoption is the multimodal perspective, which posits that language evolved as abimodal system, with the vocal and visual modalities very closely integratedfrom the very early stages.
... ces ressources ont un équivalent dans les LV, afin de nuancer le caractère « spécifique à une modalité » de certains procédés poétiques. 27 Un des marqueurs poétiques relativement décrit dans la littérature (Ormsby, 1995 ;Sutton-Spence, 2008 ;Beauchamp & Pion-Chevalier, 2014) est l'association d'un débit ralenti et d'un « design élargi » dans la poésie, lorsque l'on compare ce registre avec celui de la langue de tous les jours. ...
... Brentari and Poizner (1994) found that signing is perceived as monotonous when transitional movements between signs have longer durations than in typical signing, or when they look like lexical movements because of their coordination of handshape and movement. Finally, in literary form, a common device used in sign language poetry is to reduce the transitional movements between signs (Klima & Bellugi, 1979;Valli, 1993;Sutton Spence, 2005;Cole, 2009) by choosing from among alternative expressions those that will create sequences of signs with minimal transitional movements-where a preceding sign will end close to or at the same place as the beginning of the next sign. These types of considerations indicate that transitional movements have an effect on the metrical structure of a poem. ...
In this paper. we offer a preliminary investigation of some aspects of individual and group variation in sign rate and rhythm, considering the sociolinguistic factors of Age (younger and older adults), Gender, and Sign Variety (Black and Mainstream American Sign Language). Differences in sign rate and rhythmic structure among signers were found in signers’ elicited narratives. A novel approach to phrasal rhythm is introduced, called “rhythm ratio”, which considers sign duration and transition duration together and is similar in spirit to the “normalized pairwise variability index” (nPVI) in spoken languages. This measure appears to be promising as a method for identifying rhythm class in sign languages; however, due to the small number of signers in each group these results can only be suggestive.
Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar maneiras de ensinar adultos surdos a criar poesia em língua de sinais como contribuição à pesquisa sobre escrita criativa no campo da língua de sinais. As pesquisas sobre a escrita criativa no Brasil ainda são escassas (Abed, 2021) e na área de Libras, não encontramos nenhum registro sobre o ensino da poesia em Libras para adultos. Como base teórica, destacamos a teoria acerca da pedagogia surda de Ladd e Gonçalves (2011). Ao considerar as formas de aprendizagem dos surdos, descrevemos a eficácia do uso de um poema específico num curso de extensão sobre poesia em Libras ocorrido na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. O curso foi ministrado por duas professoras surdas para adultos surdos, fluentes em Libras, que desejavam aprender sobre sua própria forma artística de linguagem cultural. Analisamos o poema Tree (Árvore), do poeta surdo britânico Paul Scott, destacando seus recursos poéticos, como um modelo para ensinar poesia em língua de sinais. Mostramos os resultados poéticos atingidos ao utilizar este poema num espaço de aprendizagem composto por professores fluentes e participantes surdos.
Portuguese sign language (LGP) teachers are compiling an ongoing list of recommended literary materials to teach LGP as a first language to deaf students, as it exists for children and young people in general in the National Reading Plan (PNL). Sign language (SL) literature is expressed through narratives, poetry, humour, theatre and films. Thus, these deaf teachers propose implementing a National Literature Plan for the deaf, which includes stories, movies and videos in SL that may or may not be about the deaf. The list is composed of children's books published in Portugal with deaf characters and/or translated to LGP by deaf signers; online LGP translations of children's literature; narratives translated to LGP by the deaf teachers; unpublished stories created by the deaf teachers; foreign children's books with deaf characters; relevant films with deaf characters; and relevant videos of deaf authors, at national and international levels, in poetry, storytelling, humour and music. All these materials are then approached in annual lesson planning for all school years, according to learning skills indicated in the LGP curriculum.
Torso articulation in sign languages is mentioned variably in the linguistic analysis of sign languages but is often ignored. The prevailing idea seems to be that detailed study of movement of the parts of the torso will yield little insight into linguistic matters – so mentions can be general and brief. The result is that torso articulations are an unmined area – perhaps one that holds treasures, particularly regarding the appreciation of creative sign language. We draw together the findings of other research regarding torso articulation, then give an inventory of possible torso articulations, exemplified with signs from dozens of the world’s named sign languages, and a brief overview of how annotation systems have approached torso movement in signs. We end with suggestions for how the study of torso articulation can open new avenues of sign language research.
Neste estudo, fazemos uma articulação entra as áreas de Literatura Surda e Escritas de Sinais, uma vez que concebemos que a educação bilíngue e bicultural para Surdos envolve problematizar a presença ou ausência desses componentes. A partir de uma pesquisa bibliográfica, buscamos identificar o que se tem discutido sobre a Literatura Surda Infantil divulgada pelo sistema de escrita SignWriting, a fim de refletir sobre como essa escrita pode potencializar o processo de letramento literário de discentes surdos e, consequentemente, possibilitar uma leitura literária linguisticamente acessível. Como resultado, mapeamos obras disponíveis no mercado editorial e outras publicadas gratuitamente em contexto digital, discutindo sua constituição e ressaltando aspectos atrelados à atuação docente. Ainda, constatamos um número ínfimo de editoras que publicaram criações, adaptações e traduções nessa escrita. Vale ressaltar que essa ausência não pode ser tomada como empecilho ao docente para não propiciar uma leitura literária ao discente Surdo, uma vez que essa escrita pode facilitar a assimilação, a compreensão e a ampliação vocabular, além da autonomia por se tratar de uma produção linguisticamente acessível na primeira língua. Esperamos com este estudo lançar luzes para essas produções, destacando suas vantagens e a necessidade de seu uso no contexto educacional bilíngue.
O presente artigo é uma tradução comentada da poesia “Só quero mais giz” em Língua Brasileira de Sinais, de autoria da poetisa surda Victória Hidalgo Pedroni para a Língua Portuguesa escrita. Trata-se de uma crítica ao momento político materializado em uma poesia visual, um gesto cultural de resistência da comunidade surda. Para a realização desse trabalho, empregamos a abordagem qualitativa e utilizamos a metodologia de estudo de caso que objetiva se aprofundar em uma situação singular (LÜDKE; ANDRÉ, 1986). Do ponto de vista teórico, situamo-nos na perspectiva dialógica do discurso Bakhtiniana. Utilizamos a metodologia de tradução comentada, consolidada forma de estudo do processo de tradução. O conteúdo da poesia reflete um problema político e é reenunciado em português com estratégias específicas para construção de efeitos estéticos.
Sign poetry is the artistic expression of the poetry that arises in the body of a Deaf person in his or her own language, sign language. This session will review the definition of sign poetry and discuss the current status of sign poetry in Japan and abroad, and the need to promote poetry by Deaf people themselves.
Poetry, defined as language divided into lines, is found in most known human cultures. This masterful survey of poetry and its constituent components demonstrates the functions performed by metre, rhyme, alliteration and parallelism, arguing that each line of a poem fits as a whole unit into the limited capacity of human working memory. Using examples from around the world, Fabb surveys the wide varieties of poetry and the ways they are performed, including those in songs and signed literatures. Focusing on language, form and memory, he helps us understand why poetry is a particularly valued way of using language. A fresh exploration of poetry, the book will be welcomed by students and researchers of literature, linguistics and psychology, as well as anyone interested in poetry.
The history of the deaf has been regarded as ‘A history of misunderstandings’ [de Saint-Loup, A. 1996. “A History of Misunderstandings: The History of the Deaf.” Diogenes 44 (175): 1–25]. Literary writing about deaf lives is so rare that scholars discuss the ‘invisibility’ of deafness in the cultural imaginary (McDonald, D. 2011. “HEARSAY: How Stories About Deafness and Deaf People are Told.” PhD diss., Griffith University). In response to this dearth of literature, this paper considers the unique potential of creative nonfiction writing to offer new epistemological understandings of ‘the hearing line’—‘the invisible boundary between the deaf and the hearing’ (Krentz, C. 2007. “Writing Deafness: The Hearing Line in Nineteenth Century Literature.” USA: University of North Carolina Press, 2).
I discuss the process of writing a memoir, titled ‘A Sense of You’, which explores my relationship with my Deaf grandparents.
By engaging with family history and stories, this work provides a window to interactions across the hearing line. I argue for the value of literary representations that disrupt existing understandings of both deafness and hearing, utilising family history and creative nonfictionto animate lived experience. Through engagement with Deaf Studies philosophy, this paper troubles medical understandings of deafness.
Verbal silence touches on every possible aspect of daily life. This book provides a full linguistic analysis of the role of silence in language, exploring perspectives from semantics, semiotics, pragmatics, phonetics, syntax, grammar and poetics, and taking into account a range of spoken and written contexts. The author argues that silence is just as communicative in language as speech, as it results from the deliberate choice of the speaker, and serves functions such as informing, conveying emotion, signalling turn switching, and activating the addresser. Verbal silence is used, alongside speech, to serve linguistic functions in all areas of life, as well as being employed in a wide variety of written texts. The forms and functions of silence are explained, detailed and illustrated with examples taken from both written texts and real-life interactions. Engaging and comprehensive, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in this fascinating linguistic phenomenon.
O desenvolvimento de currículos de línguas de sinais é um acontecimento contemporâneo que poucos países puderam implementar oficialmente para ensinar a Língua de Sinais padrão nacional como primeira língua (L1) e/ou língua materna nas séries escolares. Nestes, a Língua de Sinais figura como uma disciplina obrigatória, que a criança surda precisa estudar e se desenvolver metalinguisticamente, como é o caso do aprendizado de línguas faladas como L1. Uma língua de sinais como metalinguagem também significa que o currículo ensina conhecimentos linguísticos explícitos para que a criança compreenda gradualmente como a língua de sinais funciona em diferentes contextos, para que faça escolhas efetivas de significado ou estilo e para que compreenda os conteúdos de forma mais completa ao estudar a língua. Em outras palavras, o currículo de língua de sinais aborda a importância de desenvolver a alfabetização na língua de sinais para a criança. Tradicionalmente, a alfabetização está ligada à leitura e à escrita e, para sua aprendizagem, o currículo de línguas estabelece cinco componentes essenciais da alfabetização inicial: compreensão, consciência fonológica, fonética, conhecimento de convenções de escrita e fluência. O artigo discute esses componentes em apoio à alfabetização na língua de sinais como uma forma de alfabetização verbal (não escrita), a partir de um estudo documental entre o currículo da língua de sinais e o currículo indígena.
Resumo Este artigo analisa o poema “Farol da Barra” tendo como base a teoria de experiência estética de Jauss (1994). Também trazemos para a discussão as propostas teóricas de Figurelli (1988), Zilberman (1989), entre outros. A partir de um método de análise qualitativa, com a finalidade de legitimar a produção literária de e para pessoas surdas, propomos uma analogia entre as ideias defendidas pela estética da recepção, mormente partindo das propostas de Jauss, e as ideias evidenciadas pelo poema surdo “Farol da Barra”, criado por, Maurício Barreto, poeta surdo de Salvador/BA. Nesse sentido, concluímos que, assim como a literatura de não surdos, a literatura surda pode ser analisada e percebida conceitualmente pelo observador (leitor), além de possibilitar ao autor surdo construir fruição estética inerente à poesia em língua brasileira de sinais (Libras), de acordo com as três concepções de experiências fundamentais de Jauss (1994), que são poiesis, aisthesis e katharsis.
Linguistic landscape (LL) is a study of writing in a public area. This study pertained signs, language symbols, labelling of stores, billboards and etcetera. LL offers an issue that relates to language and society or LL is a study that discusses the phenomena of the language environment in the form of writing and drawing. Keywords: language, linguistic landscape, language environment
In the translation into sign language, where does the ≪sense≫ reside and how can it be constructed in the target language? To what extent does the orality of sign languages, intended as the absence of a writing system, affect the translation process? What role do the characteristics of sign languages, first and foremost iconicity, play? The issues we address in this study are placed at the crossroads between sign language linguistics and translation studies, thanks to the awareness that both disciplines have, respectively matured in recent decades. As regards the linguistics of sign languages, we refer to the semiological model proposed by Cuxac and colleagues. On the subject of translation studies, our main reference is represented by Meschonnic, according to whom the sense is found in the ≪rhythm≫ (understood as form). Analyzing the translation process, and more specifically the poetic translation, allows us to observe the centrality of the body. We take into account the perspective of embodied cognition , based on the link between the language and the sensorimotor system. Therefore, we question the role of the body in the construction of the sense: the body is considered above all in its sensorial dimension, in its being an entity that perceives and enters into a relationship with the world. That makes us hypothesize a synesthetic construction of the sense . In order to follow in practice what is stated theorically, we present one of our translations: the translation into LIS of a poem in Italian, L'Infinito by Giacomo Leopardi. The translation into sign language makes it possible to observe the role of corporeality in the process of re-enunciation of sense.
Oral performances and written versions of the King Gesar story have long influenced each other—and continue to do so. This chapter focuses on the interaction between the overall contextual force and individual elements that build up symbolism in Goldbaltt and Lin’s English translation of Alai’s novel The Song of King Gesar. This case study focuses on the oral epic poem King Gesar, retold in written form by Alai, a Chinese writer of Tibetan descent. It addresses repetition and rhyme, symmetry and balance, neologisms, ambiguity, themes, metaphor and allusion, and stage performance in the translation of poetry into sign language. The two main findings are that (1) evidence presented from the English translation of Alai’s The Song of King Gesar demonstrates that metaphoric meaning is not inherent in signs. What is inherent is iconic value, and purely iconic signs become metaphorical when situated in a certain poetic context; (2) sign language poetry represents the visual literary works created by the Deaf in a highly refined mode of sign language.KeywordsAlai
The Song of King Gesar
Sign language poetryIconicityMetaphorTibetan
This paper presents a study of the use of constructed action (CA) in the stories and conversations of adult Finnish Sign Language (FinSL) signers of different ages. CA is defined here as a type of depiction in which a signer enacts the actions, feelings, thoughts and utterances of discourse referents with different parts of their body. Most studies on CA in sign languages have been done on the basis of signed storytelling, and little is known about how the use of CA varies in different discourse types. The use of CA has also been noted to vary between individual signers, but we do not yet know much about the socio-individual phenomena that may be linked to this variation. In the present study, we investigate whether the use of CA is different in the stories and the conversations of adult FinSL signers, and whether younger (18–39) and older (50–79) adult signers use CA differently in stories and conversations. The study is based on the manual annotation of video data recorded for the Corpus of Finnish Sign Language (Corpus FinSL) and the analysis includes frequency descriptions and statistical analysis. The data show that there is a statistically significant difference in the use of CA in stories and conversations, and that in storytelling, older adults use significantly more CA than younger adults. This difference between the two age groups is particularly evident in the overt uses of CA. The work presented here points toward the need for more investigation of CA in non-narrative discourse contexts and in the language use of signers of different ages.
Introduction. Music in the Deaf community is a socio-cultural phenomenon that depicts a specific identity and way of experiencing the world, which is just as diverse, rich and meaningful as that of members of any other culture. Objective. The aim of this paper was to point out the historical and socio-cultural frameworks, complexity, richness, specific elements, types and forms of musical expression of members of the Deaf community. Methods. The applied methods included comparative analysis, evaluation, and deduction and induction system. Results. Due to limitations or a lack of auditive component, the members of Deaf culture use different communication tools, such as speech, pantomime, facial expressions and sign language. Signed music, as a phenomenon, is the artistic form which does not have long history. However, since the nineties of the past century and with technological development, it has been gaining greater interest and acknowledgement within the Deaf community and among the hearing audience. Signed music uses specific visuo-spatial-kinaesthetic and auditive elements in expression, such as rhythm, dynamism, rhyme, expressiveness, iconicity, intensity of the musical perception and the combination of the role of the performer. Conclusion. Signed music as a phenomenon is an art form that incorporates sign poetic characteristics (lyrical contents), visual musical elements and dance.
The art of signed music involves the use of rhythmicized signs from a signed language, such as American Sign Language (ASL), in a musical context. Signed music encompasses a variety of subgenres, including ASL hip hop or “dip hop.” A typical dip hop performance involves a Deaf or hard-of-hearing artist simultaneously performing vocalized and signed rapping over a looped background beat. Although dip hop emerged as a grassroots movement in the early 1990s, it has received little analytical attention in the scholarly literature on hip hop. In this paper, the authors combine techniques adapted from analyzing rhythm in non-signed rap music with techniques adapted from analyzing non-rapped signed music to analyze the rhythmic flow of tracks by dip hop artists Sean Forbes, Wawa, and Signmark. The authors demonstrate that dip hop artists have developed genre-specific rhythmic paradigms and tropes to convey the periodicity and rhyme that are fundamental to rap music. Specifically, we address the alignment of rhythm and meter in signed and vocal rap and the conveyance of a repeated “beat” through rhythmic signing. The analyses of dip hop tracks reveal important differences between dip hop and vocal rap, as well as differences between the conventions of dip hop and ASL poetry.
Die Beschäftigung mit Gebärdensprachpoesie ist eine heikle Angelegenheit, denn worüber sprechen wir, wenn wir von Gebärdensprachpoesie sprechen? Zum einen geht es um eine Sprache, zum anderen um die Sprecher dieser Sprache. Tatsächlich ist Gebärdensprache unmittelbar verbunden mit tauben Menschen, für die sie das wichtigste Merkmal einer gemeinsamen Identität ist; und gleichzeitig ist Gebärdensprache eine Sprache, die an Universitäten, Hochschulen und Volkshochschulen gelehrt wird und zwar keineswegs nur Menschen, die ›irgendwie‹ etwas mit Gehörlosen zu tun haben, sondern auch für diejenigen, die von dieser Sprache angesprochen und berührt werden, die sie erlernen wollen, weil sie ihnen gefällt, weil sie sie gerne sprechen oder mit ihr arbeiten oder weil sie ihr sprach- bzw. kulturwissenschaftliches Interesse weckt.
Este artigo analisa o poema “Cinco sentidos”, tradução para a Língua Brasileira de Sinais feita pelo artista surdo Nelson Pimenta, a partir do poema “Five Senses”, originalmente produzido pelo também surdo Paul Scott, na British Sign Language. Nosso objetivo é identificar como se constituem elementos da camada fônica, tais quais o ritmo e a rima, em poemas surdos. Para tanto, revisitamos alguns conceitos de poesia, poema, ritmo e rima, originalmente pensados para línguas orais, a fim de verificar como esses se aplicam a produções poéticas em uma língua visuo-gestual. Como metodologia para a análise do poema, procedemos à leitura detalhada do poema gravado em vídeo, à transcrição do poema por meio de glosas e à análise dos elementos semióticos que constituem ritmo e rima no poema, com base no vídeo e nas glosas por nós elaboradas.
Palavras-chave:Poesia Surda. Ritmo. Rima. Poemas em Língua Brasileira de Sinais.
This chapter critically analyses the use of conceptual metaphors in selected Cameroonian newspapers articles aimed at beautifying or criticizing President Paul Biya and his aides. The selected articles covered a 2018 US-Cameroon diplomatic crisis triggered by US Ambassador's advice to Biya to relinquish power. In the light of a textual analysis of the corpus, the chapter argues that journalists and citizen journalists whose articles were considered for this study portrayed Biya and his close aides along a variety of metaphors. Positivity or negativity in the metaphors used in the media text generally depended on their authors' tones and editorial policies. The pro-government and neutral media voices (notably Cameroon Tribune and Mutations) mostly used metaphors such as nation building (representing Biya as an accomplished nation builder) and scaling (by which Biya and his aides were judged or rated high above standards). Meanwhile, anti-government media outlets (such as Cameroon Concords, Cameroon Post, Le Messager and Bareta News) used such metaphors as bestiality, scatology/garbage, theatre, oppression, transgression, and sickness/handicap among others, to criticize Biya's rule.
Sign languages exhibit the drive for ease of articulation found in spoken languages, particularly in fast and casual conversation, where the methods that reduce effort are shown here to be limited by the need to maintain recognizability. Participatory dance, which uses the same articulators as sign languages plus additional ones, also demonstrates methods of reducing biomechanical effort, analogous to those seen in sign languages, and, again, limited by the need to maintain recognizability of the dance figures/phrases. However, when we look at performance language (here, sign poetry) and performance dance, we find a contrast: sign language poetry uses reduced and enhanced forms, while performance dance does not use reduced forms but often uses enhanced forms. We attribute this contrast to the different functions of the different types of language and dance, with attention to the notion of intention in performance dance.
The teacher of deaf children in primary education is called to apply sign bilingualism in his/her teaching, and hence to use sign language - such as LIBRAS - as the first language during in-class time, and as a school subject. This again means that all other subjects - among them Portuguese - need to be taught in SL. In fact, Portuguese is taught as the second language of deaf children. In such educational setting, the teacher needs to develop learning materials for LIBRAS. Current research lacks recording such practices, although, unofficially, it is common knowledge that teachers translate existing school materials that have been developed for Portuguese and for hearing pupils in primary education. In this paper, a LIBRAS translation is presented of the poem “As abelhas” by Vinícius de Moraes, with the scope to demonstrate its linguistic use for the teaching of LIBRAS as a first language. Apart from its target vocabulary items, form-focused tasks are demonstrated, indicating their implementation for the development of deaf children’s receptive and productive skills. In doing so, the poem is presented following the A-level descriptors (A1, A2) of the Common European Framework of Reference for Sign Languages.
Pollitt offers a perspective emerging from the encounter between sign languages and alphabetized languages. The examples illustrating this chapter are drawn from the challenge of translating sign language poetry, or ‘Signart’. The densely semiotic, three-dimensional nature of Signart increases the demand on translators to expand their intersemiotic range in order to achieve successful translation. Given here as case studies, Pollitt’s experimental intersemiotic practices harness the semiotic resources of various communication modes and materials. Situated in relation to a number of contemporary translation theories, this chapter explores the new meanings that are made available by these alternative translational practices. Pollitt suggests intersemiotic translations of Signart can engage new audiences in different ways, thereby developing new social and cultural forms of communication beyond traditional translations of Signart.
This paper is the first comprehensive study of the thematic and related features of South African Sign Language (SASL) poetry – a body of creative work that is composed and performed by deaf South African poets in their natural language. Using poems we recently collected, we provide an overview of the subjects, themes and plots that appear in these poems. We argue that the SASL poetry reviewed reflects a fairly even distribution across three important subjects – deafhood, nationhood and nature. This is in contrast to the literature of American or European sign languages, which mostly focus on the issue of deaf identity.
Recent studies on poetry in signed languages focus on the classification of literary material and the identification of stylistic features used by poets. Here, our aim is to go further and try to understand what signed poetry and its translation reveal about signed languages. Translation raises an issue of inter-cultural barriers. As Newmark (1981) said, translation is part of intellectual life of every civilized people. The community of the Deaf is not an exception. The translations are imported into and exported from its cultural territory. Poetry, this cultural material, leads us to examine the question of translation with the perspective of a text’s transition from one culture to another. Studies in linguistics of sign language face a problem for setting boundaries between verbal, non-verbal and gestural components of a signer’s expression. What can be designated as a “text”, in a signed language? In terms of narratives, it is not easy to answer this question. But it is even more complex in the performance poetry in signed language, where verbal, corporal, spatial, facial expression are very closely coupled. The process of translation of poetry between French and French sign language forces us to consider a double process: on the one hand, from one language and culture into another, and on the other hand, from oral to written style and vice versa. What do translators actually do? Who are the translators? Different methods and ways of translating between French and FSL poems have been experimented: a deaf poet who translates by himself because he has bilingual and bicultural abilities; an outside source who translates with no connection to the poet; the pairing of a deaf poet and a hearing sign language interpreter; or a cross functional translation team composed by deaf and hearing poets, and deaf and hearing translators. These translation proceedings give the opportunity to consider the sense of the word “interpreter” in French. Professional sign language interpreters are well placed to be part of such a translating team. Their professional abilities consist of switching from one language into another. But in French, the word “interpreter” has different meanings. It is also equivalent to “performer”. Is the interpreter the only performer of his or her work? In other words, do translated poems have an independent existence? Also, is it possible to consider a signed poem independently from its author? Can we consider video recording as a written form? Finally, how can one share a signed poem with the public? Our presentation is based, on one hand, on the experience of two deaf poets, who both compose poems in FSL and are involved in different translation proceedings: Levent Beskardes and François Brajou; and, on the other hand, on the experience of French/FSL interpreters who are particularly interested and involved in the translation of signed poetry. Together, they will participate in a workshop preparing a poetry festival (Voix Vives, held in the city of Sete, France). During this festival, poems and their translations are performed live. This allows us to examine the relations between signed poetry and stage performance.
Este artigo tem por objetivo refletir sobre o processo tradutório de textos poéticos da Língua Portuguesa (LP) para a Língua Brasileira de Sinais (Libras). Nas comunidades surdas brasileiras, tanto os textos poéticos clássicos quanto os literários ainda não possuem ampla circulação, limitando o acesso dos surdos às produções culturais universais. A tradução de textos artísticos, especialmente poéticos, nesse sentido, configura desafios do ponto de vista linguístico e discursivo pelas especificidades materiais das línguas envolvidas no processo tradutório (uma de modalidade oral/auditiva/escrita e outra de modalidade visual/gestual/espacial) e pelas características de textos produzidos a partir destes gêneros. Com base na teoria da transcriação construída por Haroldo de Campos, analisa-se o processo tradutório da poesia “Deficiência”, de Alexandre Filordi de Carvalho, escrita em LP, para a Libras, com gravação e circulação em evento científico. Trata-se de uma poesia contemporânea cuja relação centra-se na reflexão entre deficiência/eficiência presentes na condição humana.
South African Sign Language (SASL) poetry is still exploring many forms of poetry genres. This article describes the recent development of a new ‘genre’ in sign language poetry: signed renga (group poetry). The article will outline the form – what it is, how it has developed and spread, and why it is an apparently successful poetic genre. A sketch of a workshop from Signing Hands Across the Water 2 (SHAW 2) will also be provided to illustrate how renga emerges out of group work. First we will briefly explain common features of signed renga, drawing on a body of signed renga in British, Irish and Swedish Sign Languages. The second half of the article is an in-depth analysis of one signed renga, titled South Africa, which emerged from the SHAW 2 festival, with a focus on transitions as collaborative performance using shared signing space and eye gaze direction.
This article considers ways in which signing poets use space to produce visual images, creating aesthetic and metaphorical effects using the options available to sign languages and their bodies, whether in a solo performance or jointly constructed as duets or living tableaus. Close reading of sign language poetry shows poets use their bodies to demonstrate poetic images directly, by embodying the referent so they ‘become’ it, or by showing it through a transfer onto different parts of the body. Even richer images with additional metaphorical meaning arise when poets perform with others, especially to convey concepts of contrast or unity. The article draws primarily upon poetic performances in South African Sign Language (SASL) at Signing Hands Across the Water 2, an international sign poetry festival held in Johannesburg in 2014. It also considers works in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) and British Sign Language (BSL) – two languages whose rich poetic activity has not yet received much research interest. Analysis of this creative work offers ways for poets working in any sign language to develop their creations. Additionally, such an analysis informs the wider artistic and literary world about possibilities for creating visual linguistic art forms.
This article explores the theme of identity in terms of ‘being and belonging’ in South African Sign Language (SASL) poetry through the close reading of five SASL poems. Previous studies on the literature of other sign languages almost exclusively focus on the construction of an essentialised Deaf identity and the discovery of ‘Deafhood’. The notion of a transnational Deaf identity based on the shared experience of oppression in the hearing-dominant society has been prioritised in the discussion of sign language poetry.
However, we claim that, due to the impact of apartheid, Deaf South African poets tend to identify themselves as belonging to both their Deaf and their local hearing communities. Being Deaf is not necessarily their primary concern, and Deaf poets actively seek allies with hearing people in difficult situations resulting from apartheid such as forced removals and living in segregated townships. We also highlight the importance of a physical, geographical sense of ‘home’ in SASL poetry. While the majority of the signed poems studied abroad revolve around the search for an imaginary Deaf land, South African Deaf poets show a strong sense of attachment to the immediate surroundings. We conclude that the identities that emerge in sign language poetry can be constructed not only in terms of a global Deaf identity, but also in terms of the history and politics specific to each country.
The relational turn in geography has led to an understanding of space and place as actively produced agents in people’s everyday lives. Geographers have also long recognized the importance of language in understanding the social and relational nature of space. The study of American Sign Language (ASL) presents a unique opportunity to examine how language use and language creation influence the production of linguistic space. For users of ASL, space is incredibly significant. Because of the visual and spatial nature of ASL, the space surrounding a signer’s body is important not only for the signer to communicate, but also for others involved in the conversation to participate. Environments created during conversations in ASL reflect the cultural and linguistic perception of the American Deaf community. By taking a critical perspective on the production of space, it will be shown that those who use ASL, through the medium of bodily performance, create linguistic, and communication spaces that are dynamic and visual. The embodied language of ASL and the Deaf community is a perspective geographers have yet to address.
Sign languages are natural languages, they are not consciously invented by anyone, but rather develop spontaneously wherever deaf people have an opportunity to congregate and communicate regularly with each other. This chapter briefly explains how they do so. It examines the structure of the sentence (syntax), and then moves to the structure of the smaller units of language, those that may be compared to the meaningless but identifiable sounds of speech (phonology). The chapter ends the linguistic description with a discussion of the structure of words (morphology). There is something about human cognition that converges on a complex and rich language system with particular formal and even neurological characteristics, even when the evolutionarily dominant channel for its transmission is not available. Sign language study has also strengthened the claim that the acquisition of language by children is a natural and automatic process with a set timetable, pointing to some degree of genetic predisposition.
The age-old debate between the proponents of the gesture-first and speech-first positions has returned to occupy a central place in current language evolution theorizing. The gestural scenarios, suffering from the problem known as “modality transition” (why a gestural system would have changed into a predominantly spoken system), frequently appeal to the gestures of the orofacial area as a platform for this putative transition. Here, we review currently available evidence on the significance of the orofacial area in language evolution. While our review offers some support for orofacial movements as an evolutionary “bridge” between manual gesture and speech, we see the evidence as far more consistent with a multimodal approach. We also suggest that, more generally, the “gestural versus spoken” formulation is limiting and would be better expressed in terms of the relative input and interplay of the visual and vocal-auditory sensory modalities.
This chapter explores the notion of alliteration in sign language poetry. It suggests that the fundamental function of alliteration is applicable to sign language poetry, despite it being a soundless art form. Analogies can be made between the repetition of sounds and repetition of sign constituents (called ‘parameters’). They both fulfil aesthetic and metaphorical purposes in artistic language. A simplified definition of alliteration is the repetition of initial consonants (such as ‘Fly o’er waste fens and windy fields’ in ‘Sir Galahad’ by Alfred Tennyson). Among five parameters that constitute a sign (handshape, location, movement, palm orientation and non-manual features), handshape is argued to have the most consonantal quality. With its solid visual appearance at the onset of a sign articulation, handshape can produce the same initial impact as consonants do. As well as providing pure aesthetic pleasure, the repetition of the same (or similar) handshape can be used metaphorically. This I call ‘handshape symbolism’, parallel to the notion of ‘sound symbolism’ in spoken languages. For example, open hand-shapes are more likely to be associated with positive concepts, while closed handshapes, or those with ‘bent’ fingers, tend to create negative impression. Deaf poets make the most of such aesthetic and symbolic functions of handshape. They carefully select signs with certain hand-shapes that can convey their poetic message in the most effective way. The chapter provides a wide range of examples taken from actual poems composed and performed by Deaf poets.
This essay analyses gesture as embodied history in Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah. It explores how gestures can serve as vital indicators of traumatic experience and also potentially assist in working through traumas. Gestures in Shoah are examined for the referential meaning they hold which can provide insights as valuable as those contained within the oral histories scholars have previously tended to focus on in their readings of the film. Gesture, cannot, however be divorced from those spoken histories. The essay will show that if gesture is accompanied by speech in a film it must be interpreted in tandem with it rather than in isolation from it. The essay concludes by analysing the gestural significance of camerawork employed in Shoah.
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