Cover not available

Article published In: The Semiotic Diversity of Language: The Case of Signed Languages
Edited by Alysson Lepeut and Inez Beukeleers
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 36] 2022
► pp. 46–72

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Showing where you stand

The depictive potential of the lexical sign ls in LSFB conversations about language attitudes

 | University of Namur, NaLTT, LSFB-Lab
Published online: 9 June 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00071.van
Abstract
Enactment is a frequent depictive strategy used to denote referents. Its referential functions are increasingly well-documented cross-linguistically, notably in sign languages. A lesser-known function of enactment is that of stance expression. By enacting a referent, language users can also convey their own perspective and comment on the enacted individual. In this article, it is argued that the depictive manipulation of the French Belgian Sign Language (LSFB) lexical sign ls, which refers to the action of signing, is a fruitful area of investigation for the study of social meanings conveyed by means of enactment. The observation of elicited dyadic conversations about language attitudes shows that LSFB signers can mold several formational aspects of the sign ls in a variety of ways by means of enactment, providing a near first-hand experience of – and commenting on – diverse signers and their signing styles.
Article outline
  • 1.Introducing enactment
  • 2.On the functions of enactment: Looking beyond reference
  • 3.Stancetaking and enactment
    • 3.1Enacting and evaluating individual utterances
    • 3.2Enacting and evaluating social types
  • 4.Signing about signing in the LSFB Corpus: Using enactment to express language attitudes
    • 4.1Depicting with iconic lexical signs: The case of ls
    • 4.2ls in the LSFB Corpus: Tokens of the same type?
    • 4.3Enacting and evaluating diverse signers with ls
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (64)
References
Agha, Asif. 2005. “Voice, Footing, Enregisterment.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15 (1): 38–59. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Lucien, and Pilar Prieto. 2021. “Gesture and Prosody in Multimodal Communication.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ed. by Michael Haugh, Dániel Z. Kádár, and Marina Terkourafi, 430–453. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2010. Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. 2016. “Depicting as a Method of Communication.” Psychological Review 123 (3): 324–347. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H., and Richard J. Gerrig. 1990. “Quotations as Demonstrations.” Language 66 (4): 764–805. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cormier, Kearsy, David Quinto-Pozos, Zed Sevcikova, and Adam Schembri. 2012. “Lexicalisation and De-Lexicalisation Processes in Sign Languages: Comparing Depicting Constructions and Viewpoint Gestures.” Language & Communication 32 (4): 329–348. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cormier, Kearsy, Sandra Smith, and Zed Sevcikova-Sehyr. 2015. “Rethinking Constructed Action.” Sign Language & Linguistics 18 (2): 167–204. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dancygier, Barbara, and Lieven Vandelanotte. 2017. “Viewpoint Phenomena in Multimodal Communication.” Cognitive Linguistics 28 (3): 371–380. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Debras, Camille. 2015. “Stance-taking Functions of Multimodal Constructed Dialogue during Spoken Interaction.” In Proceedings of GESPIN4 (Gesture and Speech in Interaction), ed. by Gaëlle Ferré, and Mark Tutton, 95–100. Nantes: University of Nantes.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Debras, Camille, and Alan Cienki. 2012. “Some Uses of Head Tilts and Shoulder Shrugs during Human Interaction, and Their Relation to Stancetaking.” In 2012 International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust and 2012 International Conference on Social Computing, 932–937. Amsterdam: IEEE. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Meulder, Maartje. 2018. ““So, Why Do You Sign?” Deaf and Hearing New Signers, Their Motivation, and Revitalisation Policies for Sign Languages.” Applied Linguistics Review 10 (4): 705–724. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
D’Errico, Francesca, and Isabella Poggi. 2016. ““The Bitter Laughter”. When Parody Is a Moral and Affective Priming in Political Persuasion.” Frontiers in Psychology 71: 1144. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Du Bois, John W. 2007. “The Stance Triangle.” In Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, ed. by Robert Englebretson, 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dudis, Paul. 2011. “The Body in Scene Depictions.” In Discourse in signed languages, ed. by Cynthia Roy, 3–45. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2012. “Three Waves of Variation Study: The Emergence of Meaning in the Study of Sociolinguistic Variation.” Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (1): 87–100. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ferrara, Lindsay. 2020. “Some Interactional Functions of Finger Pointing in Signed Language Conversations.” Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 5 (1): 88. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ferrara, Lindsay, and Rolf Piene Halvorsen. 2017. “Depicting and Describing Meanings with Iconic Signs in Norwegian Sign Language.” Gesture 16 (3): 371–395. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ferrara, Lindsay, and Gabrielle Hodge. 2018. “Language as Description, Indication, and Depiction.” Frontiers in Psychology 91: 716. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fine, Julia C. 2019. ““They Just Had Such a Sweet Way of Speaking”: Constructed Voices and Prosodic Styles in Kodiak Alutiiq.” Language & Communication 671: 1–15. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fischer, Renate, and Simon Kollien. 2016. “Pejorative Aspects Attributed to Hearing People in Signed Constructed Dialogue.” In Pejoration, ed. by Rita Finkbeiner, Jörg Meibauer, and Heike Wiese, 325–354. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fuks, Orit. 2014. “Gradient and Categorically: Handshape’s Two Semiotic Dimensions in Israeli Sign Language Discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 601: 207–225. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ghesquière, Magaly, and Laurence Meurant. 2018. École et surdité: une expérience d’enseignement bilingue et inclusif [School and Deafness: A Bilingual and Inclusive Teaching Experience]. Namur: Presses universitaires de Namur.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles. 2007. “Participation, Stance and Affect in the Organization of Activities.” Discourse & Society 18 (1): 53–73. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gray, Bethany, and Douglas Biber. 2014. “Stance Markers.” In Corpus Pragmatics, ed. by Karin Aijmer, and Christoph Rühlemann, 219–248. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Günthner, Susanne. 1999. “Polyphony and the “Layering of Voices” in Reported Dialogues: An Analysis of the Use of Prosodic Devices in Everyday Reported Speech.” Journal of Pragmatics 31 (5): 685–708. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. “The Construction of Otherness in Reported Dialogues as a Resource for Identity Work.” In Style and Social Identities: Alternative Approaches to Linguistic Heterogeneity, ed. by Peter Auer, 419–444. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hall, Kira, Donna M. Goldstein, and Matthew Bruce Ingram. 2016. “The Hands of Donald Trump: Entertainment, Gesture, Spectacle.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6 (2): 71–100. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hodge, Gabrielle and Kearsy Cormier. 2019. “Reported Speech as Enactment.” Linguistic Typology 23(1): 185–196. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hodge, Gabrielle, and Lindsay Ferrara. 2014. “Showing the Story: Enactment as Performance in Auslan Narratives.” In Selected Papers from the 44th Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society, 2013, ed. by Lauren Gawne and Jill Vaughan, 372–397. Melbourne: University of Melbourne. [URL]
. 2022. “Iconicity as Multimodal, Polysemiotic, and Plurifunctional.” Frontiers in Psychology 131: 808896. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hodge, Gabrielle, and Sara A. Goico. 2022. “Natural and Elicited: Sign Language Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Ethnography as Complementary Methodologies.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 26 (1): 126–136. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hodge, Gabrielle, and Trevor Johnston. 2014. “Points, Depictions, Gestures and Enactment: Partly Lexical and Non-Lexical Signs as Core Elements of Single Clause-Like Units in Auslan (Australian Sign Language).” Australian Journal of Linguistics 34 (2): 262–291. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holt, Elizabeth. 2000. “Reporting and Reacting: Concurrent Responses to Reported Speech.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 33 (4): 425–454. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jantunen, Tommi. 2017. “Constructed Action, the Clause and the Nature of Syntax in Finnish Sign Language.” Open Linguistics 3 (1): 65–85. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Janzen, Terry. 2004. “Space Rotation, Perspective Shift, and Verb Morphology in ASL.” Cognitive Linguistics 15 (2): 149–174. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019. “Shared Spaces, Shared Mind: Connecting Past and Present Viewpoints in American Sign Language Narratives.” Cognitive Linguistics 30 (2): 253–279. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jehoul, Annelies, Geert Brône, and Kurt Feyaerts. 2017. “The Shrug as Marker of Obviousness: Corpus Evidence from Dutch Face-to-Face Conversations.” Linguistics Vanguard 3 (s1): 20160082. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. 2011. “Dialect Enregisterment in Performance.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 15 (5): 657–679. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuo, Sai-Hua. 2001. “Reported Speech in Chinese Political Discourse.” Discourse Studies 3 (2): 181–202. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kusters, Annelies, and Michele Ilana Friedner. 2015. “Introduction: Deaf-same and Difference in International Deaf Spaces and Encounters.” In It’s a Small World: International Deaf Spaces and Encounters, ed. by Michele Ilana Friedner, and Annelies Kusters, 9–29. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kusters, Annelies, Mara Green, Erin Moriarty, and Kristin Snoddon. 2020. “Sign Language Ideologies: Practices and Politics.” In Sign Language Ideologies in Practice, ed. by Annelies Kusters, Mara Green, Erin Moriarty, and Kristin Snoddon, 3–22. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kusters, Annelies, and Lynn Hou. 2020. “Linguistic Ethnography and Sign Language Studies.” Sign Language Studies 20(4): 561–571. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kusters, Annelies, and Ceil Lucas. 2022. “Emergence and Evolutions: Introducing Sign Language Sociolinguistics.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 26 (1): 84–98. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leidensdorf, Alice. 2019. Identité sourde et implant cochléaire: vers une identité sourde plurielle [Deaf Identity and Cochlear Implant: Towards a Plural Deaf Identity]. Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lepeut, Alysson, and Emily Shaw. 2022. “Time Is Ripe to Make Interactional Moves: Bringing Evidence From Four Languages Across Modalities.” Frontiers in Communication 71: 780124. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lepic, Ryan. 2019. “A Usage-Based Alternative to “Lexicalization” in Sign Language Linguistics.” Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 4 (1): 23. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lepic, Ryan, and Corrine Occhino. 2018. “A Construction Morphology Approach to Sign Language Analysis.” In The Constructions of Words, ed. by Geert Booij, 141–172. Cham: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lewin, Donna, and Adam C. Schembri. 2011. “Mouth Gestures in British Sign Language: A Case Study of Tongue Protrusion in BSL Narratives.” Sign Language & Linguistics 14 (1): 94–114. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McNeill, David. 1992. Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mesch, Johanna, Eli Raanes, and Lindsay Ferrara. 2015. “Co-Forming Real Space Blends in Tactile Signed Language Dialogues.” Cognitive Linguistics 26 (2): 261–287. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Metzger, Melanie. 1995. “Constructed Dialogue and Constructed Action in ASL.” In Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities, ed. by Ceil Lucas, 255–271. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meurant, Laurence. 2015. Corpus LSFB. First Digital Open Access Corpus of Movies and Annotations of French Belgian Sign Language (LSFB). LSFB-Lab, University of Namur. Corpus LSFB. [URL]
Mohammad, Abeer, and Camilla Vásquez. 2015. ““Rachel’s Not Here”: Constructed Dialogue in Gossip.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 19 (3): 351–371. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Quinto-Pozos, David. 2007. “Can Constructed Action Be Considered Obligatory?.” Lingua 117 (7): 1285–1314. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shaffer, Barbara. 2012. “Reported Speech as an Evidentiality Strategy in American Sign Language.” In Viewpoint in Language, ed. by Barbara Dancygier, and Eve Sweetser, 139–155. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shaw, Emily. 2019. Gesture in Multiparty Interaction. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Slonimska, Anita, Asli Özyürek, and Olga Capirci. 2021. “Using Depiction for Efficient Communication in LIS (Italian Sign Language).” Language and Cognition 13 (3): 367–396. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya. 2008. “Stance, Alignment, and Affiliation During Storytelling: When Nodding Is a Token of Affiliation.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 41 (1): 31–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah. 1986. “Introducing Constructed Dialogue in Greek and American Conversational and Literary Narrative.” In Direct and Indirect Speech, ed. by Florian Coulmas, 311–332. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zuckerman, Charles H. P. 2021. “Figure Composition.” Signs and Society 9 (3): 263–299. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Puupponen, Anna, Gabrielle Hodge, Benjamin Anible, Juhana Salonen, Tuija Wainio, Jarkko Keränen, Doris Hernández & Tommi Jantunen
2025. Opening up Corpus FinSL: enriching corpus analysis with linguistic ethnography in a study of constructed action. Linguistics 63:1 ► pp. 277 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue