Cover not available
Article published In:
Gesture
Vol. 16:2 (2017) ► pp.329–363

Performing gesture

The pragmatic functions of pantomimic and lexical repertoires in a natural sign narrative

| Barnard College, Columbia University

This article focuses on a signed performance by a deaf Nepali man who communicates in natural sign, which is similar to home sign but with greater cross-signer conventionality. The signer skillfully employs pantomimic (“gestural”) and lexical (“linguistic”) repertoires for distinct pragmatic purposes. In the narrative frame, he uses pantomime to vividly enact his morning routine; in the metanarrative frame, he utilizes lexical signs to directly address the audience. By examining the two repertoires’ formal characteristics and their relationship to different frames, this analysis showcases the signer’s communicative competency, demonstrates the relevance of pragmatics and genre to studies of all signed communicative modes, and challenges the idea that gesture is what language leaves behind.

Keywords: communicative competency, deaf, genre, gesture, language, lexical, natural sign, Nepal, pantomime, performance, pragmatics
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Ethnographic and communicative contexts
  • Performing gesture
    • The performance
    • Repertoires, frames, and functions
    • Other genres
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 January 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.16.2.07gre
References
Bauman, H-Dirksen L., Jennifer L. Nelson, & Heidi M. Rose
(Eds.) (2006) Signing the body poetic: Essays on American Sign Language literature. Berkeley: University of California Press. DOI logo DOI logo DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bechter, Frank
(2005) Deaf narratives and ‘deaf life’: An integrated look. In Bryan K. Eldredge, Doug Stringham, & Minnie Mae Wilding-Diaz (Eds.), Deaf studies today: A kaleidoscope of knowledge, learning, and understanding (Conference Proceedings of Deaf Studies Today! 20041 (pp. 76–96). Orem: Utah Valley State College.Google Scholar
Coppola, Marie, & Elissa L. Newport
(2005) Grammatical subjects in home sign: Abstract linguistic structure in adult primary gesture systems without linguistic input. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102 (52), 19249–19253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cormier, Kearsy, Sandra Smith, & Zed Sevcikova Sehyr
(2015) Rethinking constructed action. Sign Language & Linguistics, 18 (2), 167–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cuxac, Christian & Marie-Anne Sallandre
(2008) Iconicity and arbitrariness in French Sign Language: Highly iconic structures, degenerated iconicity and diagrammatic iconicity. In Elena Pizzuto, Paola Pietrandrea, & Raffaele Simone (Eds.), Verbal and signed languages: Comparing structure, constructs and methodologies (pp. 13–33). Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Edwards, Terra
(2012) Sensing the rhythms of everyday life: Temporal integration and tactile translation in the Seattle Deaf-Blind community. Language in Society, 411, 29–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J.
(1976) Frame semantics and the nature of language. In Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences: Conference on the origin and development of language and speech, 280 (1), 20–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fusillier-Souza, Ivani
(2006) Emergence and development of signed languages: From a semiogenetic point of view. Sign Language Studies, 7 (1), 30–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, Susan & Carolyn Mylander
(1990) The role of parental input in the development of a morphological system. Journal of Child Language, 17 (3), 527–563. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Graif, Peter
(2012) Undeniable statements: Other minds and the intelligibility of deaf writing. Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco.
Green, E. Mara
(2014) The nature of signs: Nepal’s deaf society, local sign, and the production of communicative sociality. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Haviland, John
(2004) Evidential mastery. In Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, (pp. 348–368).Google Scholar
(Ed.) (2013) Where do nouns come from? (Special Issue: Gesture, 13 (3)).Google Scholar
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika
(2011) Lending a hand: Competence through cooperation in Nepal’s deaf associations. Language in Society, 401, 285–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hundley, Bethany
(2011) Chasing Saraswati: Development of deaf education in Nepal. Unpublished PowerPoint presentation with notes, Fulbright Commission Nepal.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman
(1960) Closing statement: Linguistics and poetics. In Thomas A. Sebeok (Ed.), Style in language (pp. 350–377). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press & New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Jepson, Jill
(1991) Two sign languages in a single village in India. Sign Language Studies, 701, 47–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kendon, Adam
(2014) Semiotic diversity in utterance production and the concept of ‘language’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 369 (1651), 20130293. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Khanal, Upendra
(2012) Age-related sociolinguistic variation in sign languages, with particular reference to Nepali Sign Language. Unpublished paper, Indira Gandhi National Open University.Google Scholar
Kisch, Shifra
(2008) “Deaf discourse”: the social construction of deafness in a Bedouin community. Medical Anthropology, 27 (3), 283–313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012) Demarcating generations of signers in the dynamic sociolinguistic landscape of a shared sign-language: The case of the Al-Sayyid Bedouin. In Ulrike Zeshan & Connie de Vos (Eds.), Sign languages in village communities: Anthropological and linguistic insights (pp. 87–125). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Nijmegen: Ishara Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kusters, Annelies
(2010) Deaf utopias? Reviewing the sociocultural literature on the world’s “Martha’s Vineyard situations”. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 15 (1), 3–16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liddell, Scott K.
(2000) Blended spaces and deixis in sign language discourse. In David McNeill (Ed.), Language and gesture (pp. 331–357). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lillo-Martin, Diane & Richard P. Meier
(2011) On the linguistic status of ‘agreement’ in sign languages. Theoretical Linguistics, 37 (3/4), 95–141.Google Scholar
McNeill, David
(1992) Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Meir, Irit, Wendy Sandler, Carol Padden, & Mark Aronoff
(2010) Emerging sign languages. In Marc Marschark & Patricia Elizabeth Spencer (Eds.), Oxford handbook of deaf studies, language, and education, Vol. 21 (pp. 267–280). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Metzger, Melanie
(1995) Constructed dialogue and constructed action in American Sign Language. In Ceil Lucas (Ed.), Sociolinguistics in Deaf communities (pp. 255–271). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.Google Scholar
Morford, Jill P. & Judy A. Kegl
(2000) Gestural precursors to linguistic constructs: How input shapes the form of language. In David McNeill (Ed.), Language and gesture (pp. 358–387). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morford, Jill P. & Susan Goldin-Meadow
(1997) From here and now to there and then: The development of displaced reference in homesign and English. Child Development, 68 (3), 420–435. Nyst, Victoria, Kara Sylla, & Moustapha Magassouba (2012). Deaf signers in Douentza, a rural area in Mali. In Ulrike Zeshan & Connie de Vos (Eds), Sign languages in village communities: Anthropological and linguistic insights (pp. 251–276). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Nijmegen: Ishara Press. 10.1515/9781614511496.251 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
National Federation of the Deaf Nepal (NDFN)
(1996) Nepāli sānketik bhāshā shabdakosh (pratham bhāg) / Nepali Sign Language dictionary (Book one).Google Scholar
(2003) Nepāli sānketik bhāshā shabdakosh / Nepali Sign Language dictionary.Google Scholar
Nonaka, Angela M.
(2009) Estimating size, scope, and membership of the speech/sign communities of undocumented indigenous/village sign languages: The Ban Khor case study. Language & Communication, 29 (3), 210–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nyst, Victoria
(2012) Shared sign languages. In Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach, & Bencie Woll (Eds.), Sign language: An international handbook (pp. 552–574). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nyst, Victoria, Kara Sylla, & Moustapha Magassouba
(2012) Deaf signers in Douentza, a rural area in Mali. In Ulrike Zeshan & Connie de Vos (Eds), Sign languages in village communities: Anthropological and linguistic insights (pp. 251–276). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Nijmegen: Ishara Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Padden, Carol A., Irit Meir, So-One Hwang, Ryan Lepic, Sharon Seegers, & Tory Sampson
(2013) Patterned iconicity in sign language lexicons. Gesture, 13 (3), 287–308. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sallandre, Marie-Anne
(2007) Simultaneity in LSF discourse. In Myriam Vermeerbergem, Lorraine Leeson, & Otto Crasborn (Eds.), Simultaneity in signed languages (pp. 103–126). Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sandler, Wendy
(2012) Dedicated gestures and the emergence of sign language. Gesture, 12 (3), 265–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schembri, Adam, Caroline Jones, & Denis Burnham
(2005) Comparing action gestures and classifier verbs of motion: Evidence from Australian Sign Language, Taiwan Sign language, and nonsigners’ gestures without speech. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 10 (3), 272–290. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sutton-Spence, Rachel & Donna Jo Napoli
(2010) Anthropomorphism in sign languages: A look at poetry and storytelling with a focus on British Sign Language. Sign Language Studies, 10 (4), 442–475. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sutton-Spence, Rachel & Penny Boyes Braem
(2013) Comparing the products and the processes of creating sign language poetry and pantomimic improvisations. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 37 (4), 245–280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Woodward, James
(1996) Modern Standard Thai Sign Language, influenced from ASL, and its relationship to Original Thai Sign Language varieties. Sign Language Studies, 921, 227–252. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2000) Sign languages and sign language families in Thailand and Vietnam. In Karen Emmorey & Harlan Lane (Eds.), The signs of language revisited (pp. 23–47). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Young, Katharine
(2004) Frame and boundary in the phenomenology of narrative. In Marie-Laure Ryan (Ed.), Narratives across media: The languages of storytelling (pp. 76–107). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Zeshan, Ulrike
(2004) Interrogative constructions in signed languages: cross-linguistic perspectives. Language, 80 (1), 7–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006) Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages. Nijmegen: Ishara Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011) Village sign languages: A commentary. In Gaurav Mathur & Donna Jo Napoli (Eds.), Deaf around the world: The impact of language (pp. 221–230). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 10 other publications

Clarke, Jean S., Nicholas Llewellyn, Joep Cornelissen & Rowena Viney
2021. Gesture Analysis and Organizational Research: The Development and Application of a Protocol for Naturalistic Settings. Organizational Research Methods 24:1 ► pp. 140 ff. DOI logo
De Meulder, Maartje, Annelies Kusters, Erin Moriarty & Joseph J. Murray
2019. Describe, don't prescribe. The practice and politics of translanguaging in the context of deaf signers. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 40:10 ► pp. 892 ff. DOI logo
Gawne, Lauren, Chelsea Krajcik, Helene N. Andreassen, Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker & Barbara F. Kelly
2019. Data transparency and citation in the journal Gesture . Gesture 18:1 ► pp. 83 ff. DOI logo
Goico, Sara A. & Laura Horton
2023. Homesign: Contested Issues. Annual Review of Linguistics 9:1 ► pp. 377 ff. DOI logo
Green, Jennifer, Felicity Meakins & Cassandra Algy
2022. Tradition and innovation: Using sign language in a Gurindji community in Northern Australia. Australian Journal of Linguistics 42:2 ► pp. 139 ff. DOI logo
Hodge, Gabrielle & Sara A. Goico
2022. Natural and elicited: Sign language corpus linguistics and linguistic ethnography as complementary methodologies. Journal of Sociolinguistics 26:1 ► pp. 126 ff. DOI logo
Lepic, Ryan
2020. Review of Shaw (2019): Gesture in multiparty interaction. Sign Language & Linguistics 23:1-2 ► pp. 272 ff. DOI logo
Martineau, Katherine B.
2020. Putting Our Scripts in Their Mouths: Orthography, Semiotic Ideologies, and the Embodied Publics of Name Changes in Eastern India. Signs and Society 8:1 ► pp. 8 ff. DOI logo
Snoddon, Kristin
2022. Writing as Being: On the Existential Primacy of Writing for a Deaf Scholar. Qualitative Inquiry 28:6 ► pp. 722 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. Bibliography. Journal of Sociolinguistics 26:1 ► pp. 137 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 may 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.