Looking at Sign Language as a Visual and Gestural Shorthand

Looking at Sign Language as a Visual and Gestural Shorthand In this paper I will compare and contrast sign language (used by the deaf community) and spoken language from the point of view of semiotics and linguistics. Both signed and spoken languages can be defined as: a system of systems - revolving around the notion of the linguistic sign - used by human beings to communicate. Both languages also share a common goal: to achieve maximum communication with minimal effort. Where they differ, however, is in the way they produce the meaningful signs to create an efficient system of communication and in the nature of these meaningful signs regarding arbitrariness versus iconicity. Spoken language is based on phonemes that are in opposition to each other which are arbitrary and possess no meaning of their own - but combine into larger meaningful units such as morphemes, words, etc. Thus spoken language is fundamentally auditory and arbitrary (Tobin 1990, 1997, 2007a, b). Sign language is based on units that represent a combination of hand-shapes and gestures which have an orientation and movement to various parts of the body - all of which not only possess meaning - but are iconic rather than arbitrary in nature. Thus sign language is fundamentally visual and iconic (Fuks 2008; Fuks and Tobin 2008). Therefore it is our contention that the traditional concepts of spoken language are neither appropriate nor suitable for sign language and a different approach to analyze sign language will be suggested in this paper.

[1]  Yishai Tobin.  Invariance, Markedness and Distinctive Feature Analysis: A contrastive study of sign systems in English and Hebrew , 1994 .

[2]  Yishai Tobin,et al.  Semiotics and Linguistics , 1990 .

[3]  Virginia Volterra,et al.  Terms for Spatio-Temporal Relations in Italian Sign Language , 1995 .

[4]  Rebecca Kantor,et al.  The Acquisition of Classifiers in American Sign Language , 2013 .

[5]  Wendy Sandler,et al.  Sign Language and Linguistic Universals: Entering the lexicon: lexicalization, backformation, and cross-modal borrowing , 2006 .

[6]  Penny Kaye Boyes-Braem.  Features of the handshape in American sign language , 1981 .

[7]  Sarah Florence Taub,et al.  Language from the Body: Iconicity and Metaphor in American Sign Language , 2001 .

[8]  Roman Jakobson,et al.  The Sound Shape of Language , 1979 .

[9]  Rodney B. Sangster.  Roman Jakobson and beyond : language as a system of signs : the quest for the ultimate invariants in language , 1982 .

[10]  Yishai Tobin.  Phonology as Human Behavior: Theoretical Implications and Clinical Applications , 1997 .

[11]  W. Stokoe.  Sign language structure: an outline of the visual communication systems of the American deaf. 1960. , 1961, Journal of deaf studies and deaf education.

[12]  Scott K. Liddell,et al.  American Sign Language: The Phonological Base , 2013 .

[13]  Raffaele Simone.  Iconicity in Language , 1995 .

[14]  Elissa L. Newport,et al.  The acquisition of American Sign Language. , 1985 .

[15]  D. Slobin.  The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition , 1987 .

[16]  W. Stokoe,et al.  Sign language structure: an outline of the visual communication systems of the American deaf. 1960. , 1961, Journal of deaf studies and deaf education.

[17]  Doris Aaronson,et al.  Psycholinguistic research : implications and applications , 1981 .

[18]  G. Lakoff,et al.  Metaphors We Live By , 1980 .

[19]  Y. Tobin,et al.  The signs B and B‐bent in Israeli sign language according to the theory of Phonology as Human Behavior , 2008, Clinical linguistics & phonetics.

[20]  Els van der Kooij,et al.  Phonological Categories in Sign Language of the Netherlands: The Role of Phonetic Implementation and Iconicity , 2002 .