Sign-creation in the Seattle DeafBlind community

Abstract

This article examines the social and interactional foundations of sign-creation among DeafBlind people in Seattle, Washington. Linguists studying signed languages have proposed models of sign-creation that involve the selection of an iconic gestural representation of the referent which is subjected to grammatical constraints and is thereby incorporated into the linguistic system. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork and more than 190 hours of video recordings of interaction and language use, I argue that a key interactional mechanism driving processes of sign-creation among DeafBlind people in Seattle is deictic integration. Deictic integration restricts the range of contextual values that the grammar can retrieve by coordinating systems of reference with patterns in activity. This process brings language into alignment with the world as it is perceived by the users of that language, making a range of potentially iconic relations available for selection in the creation of new signs.

Re‐Channeling Language: The Mutual Restructuring of Language and Infrastructure among DeafBlind People at Gallaudet University

“…Channels are caught up in these reroutings, but the protactile movement didn't start there. In the beginning, DeafBlind people intervened in conventions that were widespread at the time in order to re‐consider their environment—not their language (Edwards ). They were not thinking: how can I get this linguistic sign from me to you— they were thinking more broadly about what it would mean to be in the world together and what that world might have to offer.…”

“…If this is the case, then infrastructure surely plays a role in shaping, reinforcing, and responding to those patterns. In prior research, I have shown how new articulatory and perceptual affordances revealed themselves to DeafBlind people in Seattle when new participant frameworks and patterns in interaction began to emerge (Edwards , ). This research suggests that additional pressures are exerted on those channels of transmission by larger infrastructural dynamics.…”

“…Protactile DeafBlind people in Seattle addressed these questions by re‐channeling themselves to their environment. They turned away from interactional patterns organized along visual lines and sought out new, tactile modes of engagement (Edwards ). Protactile DeafBlind people in Washington, DC, have been in direct and relatively sustained contact with the Seattle community and have acquired many of their practices.…”

“…Instead, they were routed through several sighted relays. In order to establish direct links between DeafBlind people, the local authority structure had to be altered, as well as what counted as legitimate, valued moves within it (Edwards ). Based on these observations, I have argued that changing a visual language into a tactile language begins not with the language, but with the reconfiguration of the social and interactional fields to which it articulates.…”

“… In prior work, I have argued that social and interactional changes have led DeafBlind people to use the so‐called tactile channel in new ways, or, in the terms developed here, to perceive new affordances in that channel (Edwards , ). In particular, protactile people make far greater use of the proprioceptive sense than they did prior to the protactile movement (Edwards 2014a, 2014b).…”