Figure (of Personhood) Drawing: Scaffolding Signing and Signers in Nepal

A Linguistic Anthropology of Images

“…has necessarily led them to other types of semiotic phenomena, including images. For example, linguistic anthropologists have studied drawings and paintings (e.g., Chumley 2016, Hoffmann-Dilloway 2020; photographic images in print (e.g., Ball 2014, Sidnell 2021, film (e.g., Hardy 2014;Kirk 2016;Swinehart 2018;Nakassis 2020Nakassis , 2023a, television and video (e.g., Goodwin 1994, Pardo 2013, Urban 2015), and social media (e.g., Swinehart 2012, Calhoun 2019, Ross 2019; blueprints (Murphy 2005); emojis and memes (Soh 2020, Davis 2021); anime and video games (Silvio 2010, Nozawa 2013; and figurines and puppets (Wortham et al 2011, Barker 2019, among others. Linguistic anthropologists have also focused on images within their own practices, in transcription (e.g., Hoffmann-Dilloway 2021, Murphy 2021) and field recordings (e.g., Feld & Williams 1975, Murphy 2023, Zuckerman 2023.…”

Shadows and Mirrors: Spatial and Ideological Perspectives on Sign Language Competency

“…. by an external cycle with a rhythm") with "the conspicuous citationality of reported speech" (Lempert 2014, 384;Hoffmann-Dilloway 2020;Mannheim 2018;Sidnell 2006). Across the field sites in which I've conducted research in contexts of sign language-mediated deaf sociality in Nepal, Germany, and Malta, new signers often "sign along" when being addressed.…”

“…One way I responded to and signaled my novice or “new signer” (de Meulder 2018) status in conversations with Pawlu was by periodically signing along with him. Signing along entails a new signer’s animating (in Goffman’s [1974] sense) the linguistic forms addressed to them by a more skilled interlocutor in as tightly synchronized a way as possible, combining entrainment (“the process whereby our body is ‘captured’… by an external cycle with a rhythm”) with “the conspicuous citationality of reported speech” (Lempert 2014, 384; Hoffmann‐Dilloway 2020; Mannheim 2018; Sidnell 2006). Across the field sites in which I’ve conducted research in contexts of sign language‐mediated deaf sociality in Nepal, Germany, and Malta, new signers often “sign along” when being addressed 6 .…”

“…For example, in given instances of signing along, some new signers reproduce signs from the visual perspective of the person addressing them, while others reproduce signs from their own perspective. In previous work I’ve distinguished these practices by calling the former copying and the latter mirroring—I derive these terms from the signs my interlocutors have used to characterize the difference, as seen in Transcripts 3 and 4 below (see also Hoffmann‐Dilloway 2011, 2016a, 2020). Across the ethnographic contexts in which I have participated, experienced signers have frequently conjectured that a person’s mirroring rather than copying is suggestive of that person’s (lack of) previous experience with signing and (lack of) history of integration into deaf social life.…”

“…8 8 This is not the only perspective at play in Nepal as regards mirroring and older new signers (see Hoffmann‐Dilloway 2020, 2021). …”