Language as Description, Indication, and Depiction

Abstract

Signers and speakers coordinate a broad range of intentionally expressive actions within the spatiotemporal context of their face-to-face interactions (Parmentier, 1994; Clark, 1996; Johnston, 1996; Kendon, 2004). Varied semiotic repertoires combine in different ways, the details of which are rooted in the interactions occurring in a specific time and place (Goodwin, 2000; Kusters et al., 2017). However, intense focus in linguistics on conventionalized symbolic form/meaning pairings (especially those which are arbitrary) has obscured the importance of other semiotics in face-to-face communication. A consequence is that the communicative practices resulting from diverse ways of being (e.g., deaf, hearing) are not easily united into a global theoretical framework. Here we promote a theory of language that accounts for how diverse humans coordinate their semiotic repertoires in face-to-face communication, bringing together evidence from anthropology, semiotics, gesture studies and linguistics. Our aim is to facilitate direct comparison of different communicative ecologies. We build on Clark’s (1996) theory of language use as ‘actioned’ via three methods of signaling: describing, indicating, and depicting. Each method is fundamentally different to the other, and they can be used alone or in combination with others during the joint creation of multimodal ‘composite utterances’ (Enfield, 2009). We argue that a theory of language must be able to account for all three methods of signaling as they manifest within and across composite utterances. From this perspective, language—and not only language use—can be viewed as intentionally communicative action involving the specific range of semiotic resources available in situated human interactions.

Towards understanding nonmanuality: A semiotic treatment of signers’ head movements

“…As is shown in the table, manual signs include conventional signs, unconventional signs and hybrids of the two (see Enfield 2009). These signs show different levels of iconicity, indexicality and symbolicity (as defined in the current paper), and it is not uncommon at all for signs to present all these features simultaneously (Ferrara & Hodge 2018). 9 Manual signs have iconic features which require the analogical association of the similarities between qualities of the sign and qualities of its object.…”

“…I suggest here that the treatment of nonmanuals, along with many other phenomena in sign language linguistics, has been affected by preconceptual biases, brought about by structuralist semiotics and the criteria for natural language-criteria defined on the basis of written forms of spoken languages (see also e.g. Liddell 2003;Johnston 2013a;Dingemanse 2017;Ferrara & Hodge 2018). These biases result in an overemphasis on the symbolic status of nonmanual signals-an eagerness to demonstrate that certain nonmanuals have a categorical status as markers of grammatical phenomena similarly to words, morphemes or signs-and in the presupposition of links between prosodic aspects of speech and certain nonmanual signals.…”

“…Discussion of, for example, the lexicons of sign languages (e.g. Johnston & Schembri 1999), strategies in signaling meaning in sign languages (Ferrara & Hodge 2018), and mouth actions in Australian sign language (Johnston et al 2015), have been connected to Peircean semiotics. In addition to Peirce's semiotics, the treatment of signers' head movements in the current paper relies on the more recent discussions on semiotics in linguistic anthropology, psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics and gesture studies (e.g.…”

Indicating verbs as typologically unique constructions: Reconsidering verb ‘agreement’ in sign languages

“…We consider both aspects to be extremely relevant for a linguistic description of any language -spoken or signed (cf. Kendon 2008;Ferrara & Hodge 2018).…”

“…As such, the primary function of this directionality seems to be reference tracking (Fenlon et al 2018). Liddell's (2003) analysis, in which he describes indicating verbs as a fusion of morphemic and gestural elements, draws on Langacker's (1987; notion of cognitive grammar which sees speech, sign, and gesture as all part of a broader notion of "language" (cf., Ferrara & Hodge 2018). Since this time, the number of scholars that have moved away from an 3 We use the terms "subject" and "object" for consistency with the existing literature in sign language linguistics, but we do not wish to make a claim that either BSL or Auslan has a category of grammatical subject or object in the strictest sense.…”