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Reference: From conventions to pragmatics
Edited by Laure Gardelle, Laurence Vincent-Durroux and Hélène Vinckel-Roisin
[Studies in Language Companion Series 228] 2023
► pp. 127–149

When referents are seen and heard

A comparative study of constructed action in the discourse of LSFB (French Belgian Sign Language) signers and Belgian French speakers

| Laboratoire de Langue des signes de Belgique francophone (LSFB-Lab), Namur Institute of Language, Text and Transmediality (NaLTT), University of Namur

Constructed action is a referential strategy whereby signers and speakers use their bodies and/or voices to depict referents and their actions. Using a corpus-based study, this chapter compares constructed action in LSFB and Belgian French. It shows both that LSFB signers use constructed action to denote referents more frequently than Belgian French speakers do and that the two language communities use an overlapping set of articulators to enact referents. However, it also sheds light on differences in the use of these articulators, notably facial expression and the use of hand and arm movements, across LSFB and Belgian French. By documenting this referential strategy in a signed and a spoken language, this study informs the field of comparative semiotics.

Keywords: signed language, gesture, corpus linguistics, multimodal, comparative semiotics
Article outline
  • 1.Reference in signed and spoken languages
    • 1.1Referring in a signed language and its ambient spoken language: An illustration
    • 1.2Reference, a multimodal and semiotically composite phenomenon
    • 1.3Referring with constructed action across signed and spoken languages
      • 1.3.1Frequency of use
      • 1.3.2Orchestrating different articulators to enact referents
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Corpus selection
    • 2.2Annotation procedure
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Frequency of CA
    • 3.2Frequency of articulator activation
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.228.07van
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