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Article published In:
Asia-Pacific Language Variation
Vol. 4:1 (2018) ► pp.1–35

Gender variation in signs of sexual behaviour in Hong Kong Sign Language

| The Chinese University of Hong Kong

This paper discusses possible gender variation in the signs of sexual behaviour in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL). The data comes from a research project that aims at documenting and analyzing sex-related signs in this sign language for the sake of producing materials for sex education and interpreter training programs. Since sex is a highly taboo topic, euphemistic signs for the target concepts were collected and analyzed. This paper presents evidence that linguistic variation of neutral and euphemistic expressions of sex-related concepts exists in HKSL, and that gender plays a role in the choice of some but not all variants and their euphemistic counterparts.

Keywords: sexual signs, gender differences, linguistic variation, euphemisms, Hong Kong Sign Language
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Sociolinguistic variation in signed and spoken languages
    • 1.2Taboos and euphemisms in spoken and signed languages
  • 2.Research questions and methodology
    • 2.1Research questions
    • 2.2Methodology
      • 2.2.1Informants
      • 2.2.2Elicitation materials and methods
  • 3.Findings and discussions
    • 3.1Sex-related expressions in HKSL
    • 3.2Signing variation in the signs of sexual behaviours in HKSL
    • 3.3The roles of gender in the choice of linguistic variants
    • 3.4Euphemistic expressions and the role of gender in the use of these expressions
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.17002.wei
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