Belgian Journal of Linguistics - Volume 36, Issue 1, 2022

Language is complex in many respects. When conceived as a system that is to be analysed at all levels of linguistic structure, it is interpreted as a static and abstract phenomenon in which the rules are disconnected from their context of use. However, the ability to do language, construed as a fundamentally social practice grounded in our in situ face-to-face interactions, does not exclusively rely on knowing the rules that govern the grammatical principles in a given language, nor does it limit itself to understanding the lexical content of utterances. Language is more than that; it is fundamentally social and inherently multimodal in that it enables all humans to create, express, and construe meaningful utterances through their bodies. For a long time, however, linguistic theories have neglected to consider the diverse and rich ways humans do language using their bodies. In this introduction, particular attention is paid to the different roles the body plays across a range of distinct sign languages and contexts. In that respect, a short historical detour into the evolutive stages of sign language research is provided first. Next, the aims and the different contributions of this volume are outlined. Finally, some conclusions are drawn.

In this contribution, we offer a first exploration of stance expressions in Flemish Sign Language (VGT). Biber and Finegan (1989) define stance as the expression of feelings, attitudes, judgments, commitments, and assessments. The few studies focusing on stance in signed languages have shown that stance can be expressed by various structures and mechanisms such as lexical signs, manual gestures (e.g., Palm Up gestures) and embodiment/mental space blends. We will examine if these findings apply to Flemish Sign Language, and we will identify other means of expressing stance in VGT.

In this exploratory study, we focus on the following questions: (1) which articulators and semiotic resources can be used in Flemish Sign Language to express stance?; and (2) How are visible bodily actions through different articulators integrated temporally in stance expressions?

Our study is based on the analysis of about five hours of data from the Corpus Flemish Sign Language. We present examples from our dataset to illustrate that stance can be expressed through a range of structures and mechanisms (such as lexical signs, manual gestures, enactment, and non-manual features), expressed either sequentially or simultaneously by a multitude of articulators. Moreover, we zoom in on the phenomenon of stance-stacking and analyse how multiple stance expressions can be combined in VGT.

Enactment is a frequent depictive strategy used to denote referents. Its referential functions are increasingly well-documented cross-linguistically, notably in sign languages. A lesser-known function of enactment is that of stance expression. By enacting a referent, language users can also convey their own perspective and comment on the enacted individual. In this article, it is argued that the depictive manipulation of the French Belgian Sign Language (LSFB) lexical sign ls, which refers to the action of signing, is a fruitful area of investigation for the study of social meanings conveyed by means of enactment. The observation of elicited dyadic conversations about language attitudes shows that LSFB signers can mold several formational aspects of the sign ls in a variety of ways by means of enactment, providing a near first-hand experience of – and commenting on – diverse signers and their signing styles.

This paper presents a study of four recurrent gestures: sweeping away, holding away, brushing away and throwing away. These forms have so far only been studied for spoken languages and are said to form the ‘family of Away gestures’, which is semantically motivated by the effect of actions of removing or keeping away of things. Our corpus-based study aims to investigate these forms in four sign languages: Catalan, French Belgian, German, and Polish. We select and study a data sample that lasts approximately three hours. Our findings reveal the frequency, functions, and the lexicalisation status of the forms across the four studied languages.

This paper examines the relationships between information structure and prosody in LSFB (French Belgian Sign Language), focusing on the marking of contrast. A recurrent assertion in the literature is that contrast is always marked by prosodic prominence. We discuss this interaction at the manual level by investigating the connections between the presence or absence of a manual prosodic marker and the contrastive or non-contrastive character of a sign. To explore this connection, we examine data related to the holds, dominance reversals, repetitions, and variations in duration and displacement produced on 977 signs by four native LSFB signers. We also assign a certain degree of prominence to every sign depending on the number of cues employed by a participant. Data are analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics (Chi-squared test, Mann-Whitney U test, or Kruskal-Wallis test). The results show that contrast has its own prosodic marking at the manual level in LSFB and that contrastive signs are more prominent than non-contrastive ones. The prevailing cues used to encode contrast are variations in displacement or relative duration, and combinations of relative duration and displacement. The interactions between prosody, information structure, and articulatory constraints are discussed to explain the different patterns highlighted in the data sample.

Reformulation involves saying something again in a different way. Because of its metalinguistic nature (Rabatel 2017), combined with its general aim of clarifying the utterance, we propose to consider the act of reformulation as offering a window to the way interlocutors process and adjust themselves and their utterances in their social language practices. More specifically, this study proposes a set of four analytical criteria to characterize interlocutors’ investment in discourse and interaction via the observation of their use of reformulations. These criteria concern the frequency of reformulations within a production, the proportion of self- and other-reformulations (Güllich and Kotschi 1987), the type of adjustment that the act of reformulation seeks to achieve (Authier-Revuz 1995) and the type of semiotic strategies used, namely descriptive, indicative and depictive ways of meaning making (Clark 1996; Ferrara and Hodge 2018). The paper draws on the exploratory analysis of the productions of deaf LSFB signers extracted from the LSFB Corpus. It illustrates how describing the reformulations according to the proposed criteria, reveals distinctions between different patterns of pragmatic attitude and involvement in discourse and interaction. This approach opens new avenues for the pragmatic descriptions of LSFB and signed discourses in general.

Task-based exchanges are known to have multiple co-occurring interactive structures that prompt interlocutors to integrate various semiotic fields (Goodwin 2000). In addition to underlying norms of cooperative interaction, task-based exchanges include joint accomplishment of some activity. In this study, a group of co-workers (two hearing and one deaf) engaged in a team-building exercise where they jointly constructed a container fit for protecting an egg. They communicated, in part, via a sign language interpreter. Clark’s (2016) methods of communication were applied to the interpreter-mediated interaction (IMI) to determine whether certain semiotic modes were more (or less) accessible to the respective linguistic groups. Micro-analysis of three activity phases revealed moments when the participants responded to and integrated semiotic fields displayed in front of them. While not all content was accessible, like the complex depictive structures produced by the deaf person, some instances of mutual understanding without interpretation were achieved via integration of meaningful components of visibly accessible semiotic fields. Results challenge traditional views of IMIs where interpreters are positioned as channelling communicative content exclusively through them.

A large body of research has highlighted the tight, carefully organised temporal coordination of interaction. When taking turns, people tend to minimise the occurrence of gaps and overlaps (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974). Within the field of signed language linguistics, however, there is an ongoing debate: while some researchers claim that signers orient to a ‘one-speaker-at-a-time’ principle (McCleary and Leite 2013) as found in spoken conversation, others argue that signed language interactions allow for more overlapping turns, displaying a more collaborative floor in their turn-taking mechanics (Coates and Sutton-Spence 2001). The current paper aims at contributing to this discussion by providing a first cross-linguistic, systematic account of the manifestation of overlap in two signed languages, namely LSFB (French Belgian Sign Language) and VGT (Flemish Sign Language). We analysed simultaneous signing in 2 hours of dyadic face-to-face conversations. This paper combines a quantitative account of the turn timing and thus frequency counts of overlap in VGT and LSFB interactions with a more fine-grained qualitative analysis of the interactional, i.e., sequential environment, in which overlap occurs and the strategies deployed to accomplish overlap resolution by deaf participants. In doing so, this paper sheds further light on the orderliness of signed conversation, and ultimately contributes to a better understanding of the semiotic complexity of multimodal interaction management across language ecologies (Ferrara and Hodge 2018).