Cover not available
Part of
Iconicity in Cognition and across Semiotic Systems
Edited by Sara Lenninger, Olga Fischer, Christina Ljungberg and Elżbieta Tabakowska
[Iconicity in Language and Literature 18] 2022
► pp. 213–242

Image superimposition in signed language discourse and in motion pictures

An intermedial comparison

ORCID logo | University of Hamburg
Both film and signed languages are media that make use of iconicity and employ motion images for communicative and narrative purposes. This paper focuses on simultaneously presented images that occur in film for example as double exposures and in signed languages as simultaneous constructions. While film and signed languages differ in many ways with respect to iconicity, they can be compared with respect to the way simultaneously presented motion images relate to each other. Superimpositions are defined as a simultaneous view on two or more scenes or as giving two different simultaneous representations of one scene. They serve as a means of dense information packaging. While superimpositions strongly differ in their appearance in film and signed discourse, they exhibit some similarities of structure and functions. They exploit the iconicity of spatial relations emerging in the graphic spatial dimension. Their function is to express a spatial, intentional or temporal connection between two scenes or aspects of one scene, for example the intentional relation between a cognitive activity as seen in the face of a person and the object or content of that cognitive activity.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Motion images in signed language discourse: Highly iconic structures
  • 3.Superimposition as a simultaneous combination of two or more motion images
  • 4.Forms and functions of superimpositions in German Sign Language (DGS)
  • 5.Forms and functions of superimpositions in motion pictures
  • 6.Intermedial comparison
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Motion pictures (DVD editions)
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • DGS Sources
Published online: 10 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.18.11mul
References (39)
References
Aarons, D. and Morgan, R. 2003. Classifier predicates and the creation of multiple perspectives in South African Sign Language. Sign Language Studies 3(2), 125–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aronoff, M., Meir, I. and Sandler, W. 2005. The paradox of sign language morphology. Language 81(2), 301–344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bauman, H-D. L. 2003. Redesigning literature: The cinematic poetics of American Sign Language poetry. Sign Language Studies 4(1), 34–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bordwell, D., Thompson, K. and Smith, J. 2019. Film Art: An Introduction. Twelfth edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.Google Scholar
Branigan, E. 1984. Point of View in the Cinema: A Theory of Narration and Subjectivity in Classical Film. Berlin: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cogill-Koez, D. 2000. Signed language classifier predicates: Linguistic structures or schematic visual representation? Sign Language and Linguistics 3(2), 153–207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Currie, G. 1995. Image and Mind. Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cuxac, C. and Sallandre, M.-A. 2007. Iconicity and arbitrariness in French Sign Language: Highly iconic structures, degenerated iconicity and diagrammatic iconicity. In Verbal and Signed Languages: Comparing Structure, Constructs, and Methodologies, E. Pizzuto, P. Pietrandrea and R. Simone (eds.), 13–33. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Dudis, P. 2011. The body in scene depictions. In Discourse in Signed Languages, C. B. Roy (ed.), 3–45. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2004. Body partitioning and real-space blends. Cognitive Linguistics 15(2), 223–238. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Engberg-Pedersen, E. 1993. Space in Danish Sign Language. The Semantics and Morphosyntax of the Use of Space in a Visual Language. Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar
Fischer, R. and Kollien, S. 2006. Constructed action in DGS: Roses Aktions=Fragmente. Das Zeichen 20, 96–106 and 448–463.Google Scholar
Fischer, R. and Müller, A. 2014. eLCA – An e-learning unit for acquiring constructed action. In Teaching and Learning Signed Languages: International Perspectives and Practices, D. McKee, R. S. Rosen and R. McKee (eds.), 111–128. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Galt, R. 2005. Back projection: Visualizing past and present Europe in ‘Zentropa’. Cinema Journal 45(1), 3–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herrmann, A. and Pendzich, N.-K. 2018. Between narrator and protagonist in fables of German Sign Language. In Linguistic Foundations of Narration in Spoken and Sign Languages, A. Hübl, and M. Steinbach (eds.), 275–308. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kita, S., Van Gijn, I. and Van der Hulst, H. 1998. Movement phases in signs and co-speech gestures and their transcription by human coders. In Gesture and Sign Language in Human-Computer Interaction: Proceedings of International Gesture Workshop, I. Wachsmuth and M. Fröhlich (eds.), 23–35. Berlin: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liddell, S. K. 2003. Grammar, Gesture and Meaning in American Sign Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lillo-Martin, D. 2012. Utterance reports and constructed action. In Sign Language. An International Handbook, R. Pfau, M. Steinbach and B. Woll (eds.), 365–387. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mandel, M. 1977. Iconic devices in American Sign Language. In On the Other Hand. New Perspectives on American Sign Language, L. A. Friedman (ed.), 57–107. New York, San Francisco, London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
McCleary, L. E. and Viotti, E. 2010. Sign-Gesture symbiosis in Brazilian Sign Language narrative. In Meaning, Form, and Body, F. Parrill, V. Tobin and M. Turner (eds.), 181–201. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Metzger, M. 1995. Constructed Dialogue and Constructed Action in American Sign Language. In Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities, C. Lucas (ed.), 255–271. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.Google Scholar
Morin, E. 2005. The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man. Transl. L. Mortimer. [French original 1956]. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Müller, A. 2018. Gebärdensprachen als bewegte Bilder? Eine Untersuchung zur Anwendbarkeit von Filmbeschreibungsbegriffen auf bildliche Diskursphänomene in Deutscher Gebärdensprache (DGS). Hamburg: Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg. Doctoral dissertation. Online: [URL] [English: Sign Languages as Moving Images? A Study on the Applicability of Descriptive Categories from Film Studies to Iconic Discourse Phenomena in German Sign Language (DGS)]
2013. Cinematic Devices in Signed Discourse? The Case of Eyeline Match and Point-of-View Editing. (Poster presented at the Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR) 11 Conference, London UK, 10–13. July 2013).
Perniss, P. 2007. Locative functions of simultaneous perspective constructions in German Sign Language narratives. In Simultaneity in Signed Languages: Form and Function, M. Vermeerbergen, L. Leeson and O. Crasborn (eds.), 27–54. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perniss, P., Thompson, R. L. and Vigliocco, G. 2010. Iconicity as a general property of language: evidence from spoken and signed languages. Frontiers in Psychology 1 (00227). [ DOI logo]Google Scholar
Prince, S. 1993. The discourse of pictures: Iconicity and film studies. Film Quarterly 47(1), 16–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quer, J., Cecchetto, C., Donati, C., Geraci, C., Kelepir, M., Pfau, R. and Steinbach, M. (eds.) 2017. SignGram Blueprint: A Guide to Sign Language Grammar Writing. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter and Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sallandre, M.-A. and Cuxac, C. 2002. Iconicity in sign language: A theoretical and methodological point of view. In Gesture and Sign Language in Human-Computer Interaction. International Gesture Workshop, GW 2001, London, UK, April 18–20, 2001. Proceedings, I. Wachsmuth and T. Sowa (eds.), 173–180. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Schembri, A. 2003. Rethinking “classifiers” in signed languages. In Perspectives on Classifier Constructions in Sign Languages, K. Emmorey (ed.), 3–34. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Schick, B. 1990. Classifier predicates in American Sign Language. International Journal of Sign Linguistics 1, 15–40.Google Scholar
Supalla, T. 1986. The classifier system in American Sign Language. In Noun Classes and Categorization, C. Craig (ed.), 181–214. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tannen, D. 1989. Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taub, S. F. 2001. Language from the Body. Iconicity and Metaphor in American Sign Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thompson, R. and Bowen, C. J. 2009. Grammar of the Edit. 2nd edition. Amsterdam, Boston, Heidelberg: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Tybjerg, C. 2016. Seeing through spirits: Superimposition, cognition, and ‘The Phantom Carriage’. Film History, 28(2), 114–141. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vermeerbergen, M., Leeson, L., and Crasborn, O. (eds.) 2007. Simultaneity in Signed Languages: Form and Function. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
DGS Sources
“Bedeutungserklärung Brücke (DGS)” [Meaning-Explanation Bridge] 2001. In Corpus DGS and German, R. Fischer und S. Kollien, 1999–2015. University of Hamburg, unpublished. 0:29 Min.Google Scholar
[MY DGS – annotated] = Konrad, R., Hanke, T., Langer, G., Blanck, D., Bleicken, J., Hofmann, I., Jeziorski, O., König, L., König, S., Nishio, R., Regen, A., Salden, U., Wagner, S., Worseck, S. and Schulder, M. 2020. MY DGS – annotated. Public Corpus of German Sign Language, 3rd release. [Dataset. Universität Hamburg. ; last access: 2021-03-24]. DOI logoGoogle Scholar