Italian Sign Language from a Cognitive and Socio-semiotic Perspective
Italian Sign Language from a Cognitive and Socio-semiotic Perspective

Author: Virginia Volterra

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2022-09-01

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9027257841

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This volume reveals new insights on the faculty of language. By proposing a new approach in the analysis and description of Italian Sign Language (LIS), that can be extended also to other sign languages, this book also enlightens some aspects of spoken languages, which were often overlooked in the past and only recently have been brought to the fore and described. First, the study of face-to-face communication leads to a revision of the traditional dichotomy between linguistic and enacted, to develop a new approach to embodied language (Kendon, 2004). Second, all structures of language take on a sociolinguistic and pragmatic meaning, as proposed by cognitive semantics, which considers it impossible to trace a separation between purely linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge. Finally, if speech from the point of view of its materiality is variable, fragile, and non-segmentable (i.e. not systematically discrete), also signs are not always segmentable into discrete, invariable and meaningless units. This then calls into question some of the properties traditionally associated with human languages in general, notably that of ‘duality of patterning’. These are only some of the main issues you will find in this volume that has no parallel both in sign and in spoken languages linguistic research.

Signed Language and Gesture Research in Cognitive Linguistics
Signed Language and Gesture Research in Cognitive Linguistics

Author: Terry Janzen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-07-24

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 3110703890

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This volume represents the first time that researchers on signed language and gesture have come together with a coherent focus under the framework of cognitive linguistics. The pioneering work of Sherman Wilcox is highlighted throughout, scaffolding much of the research of these contributors. The five sections of the volume reflect critical areas of Dr. Wilcox’s own research in cognitive linguistics: Guiding research principles in signed language, gesture, and cognitive linguistics; iconicity across signed and spoken linguistics; multimodality; blending, depiction and metaphor in signed languages; and specific grammatical constructions as form-meaning pairings. The authors of this volume exemplify and continue Dr. Wilcox’s work of bridging signed and spoken language disciplines by contributing chapters that represent a multiplicity of perspectives on signed, spoken, and gesture data. This volume presents a unified collection of cognitive linguistics research by leading authors that will be of interest to readers in the fields of signed and spoken language linguistics, gesture studies, and general linguistics.

Multimodal Im/politeness
Multimodal Im/politeness

Author: Andreas H. Jucker

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2023-02-21

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 9027254451

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Politeness and impoliteness are not just expressed by words. People communicate polite and impolite attitudes towards each other through their intonation, tone of voice, their facial expressions, their gestures, the positioning of their bodies towards each other, and so on. This volume brings together eleven empirical studies that investigate these various modalities of im/politeness across signed, spoken and written languages, plus a detailed introductory chapter that establishes a framework for the multimodal investigation of im/politeness. The papers cover a range of languages and cultures, including Swiss German Sign Language, Catalan Sign Language, English (as a native language and as a lingua franca), Korean, Catalan, Persian, Japanese and Spanish. Using a range of data sources and state-of-the art methodologies, the papers reveal that these multimodal features are essential aspects of im/politeness across different languages, cultures and modes of interaction. Put together, the findings from these studies lay the groundwork for a new understanding of im/politeness which is fundamentally multimodal.

Evaluative Constructions in Italian Sign Language (LIS)
Evaluative Constructions in Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Author: Elena Fornasiero

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-09-18

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 3110783509

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The domain of evaluative morphology is vast and complex, as it requires the combination of morphological, semantic and pragmatic information to be understood. Nevertheless, cross-linguistic studies on spoken languages show that languages share some patterns in the way they encode evaluative features. It follows that investigating evaluative morphology in sign languages (SLs) can enrich the literature and offer new insights. This book provides descriptive and theoretical contributions by considering Italian Sign Language (LIS) as empirical ground of investigation. At the descriptive level, the analysis of corpus and elicited data improves the description of morphological processes in LIS, as well as typological studies on evaluative morphology by adding the patterns of a visuo-gestural language. At the theoretical level, the study shows the benefit of combining different approaches (Generative Linguistics, Linguistic Typology, Cognitive Linguistics) for the exploration of evaluative constructions in SLs, as it allows to identify both modality-specific and modality-independent properties. In sum, this book encourages the readers to rely on different data types, analyses and theoretical perspectives to investigate linguistic phenomena in SLs.

Metalinguistic Awareness: Recomposing Cognitive, Linguistic and Cultural Conflicts
Metalinguistic Awareness: Recomposing Cognitive, Linguistic and Cultural Conflicts

Author: Oreste Floquet

Publisher: Sapienza Università Editrice

Published: 2024-04-16

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 8893773112

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This volume is dedicated to Maria Antonietta Pinto’s research across the past five decades. The title reflects not only the dominance of metalinguistic awareness in Pinto’s work but also the pathway through which this construct has been elaborated over the years. Under the influence of two great mentors, Jean Piaget for the cognitive aspects, and Renzo Titone for the psycholinguistic aspects, Pinto created an original construct of metalinguistic awareness and instruments to measure it at different developmental stages. The volume pays tribute, among other aspects, to the heuristic value of this construct and its use in international research.

Sign Crossroads in Global Perspective
Sign Crossroads in Global Perspective

Author: Susan Petrilli

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-08

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1351490869

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Language is the species-specific human version of the animal system of communication. In contrast to non-human animals, language enables humans to invent a plurality of possible worlds; reflect upon signs; be responsible for our actions; gain conscious awareness of our inevitable mutual involvement in the network of life on this planet; and be responsibly involved in the destiny of the planet. The author looks at semiotics, the study of signs, symbols, and communication as developing sequentially rather than successively, more synchronically than diachronically. She discusses the contemporary phenomenon that people in today's society have witnessed and participated in, as part of the development of semiotics. Although there is a long history preceding semiotics, in a sense the field is, as a phenomenon, more "of our time" than of any time past. Its leading figures, whom Petrilli examines, belong to the twentieth and twenty-first century. Semiotics is associated with a capacity for listening. This capacity is also the condition for reconnecting to and recovering the ancient vocation of semiotics as that branch of medical science relating to the interpretation of signs or symptoms. The pragmatic aspect of global semiotics studies the impact of language or signs on those who use them, and looks for consequences in actual practice. In this respect, Petrilli theorizes that the task for semiotics in the era of globalization is nothing less than to take responsibility for life in its totality.

Language and Gesture
Language and Gesture

Author: David McNeill

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-08-03

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 9780521777612

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Landmark study on the role of gestures in relation to speech and thought.

Semiotics Unbounded
Semiotics Unbounded

Author: Susan Petrilli

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2005-12-15

Total Pages: 657

ISBN-13: 1442659076

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The more human knowledge increases, the more signs grow and, with this expansion, the more the boundaries of the science that studies signs also grows. In Semiotics Unbounded, Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio explain the explosion of the sign network in the era of global communication and discuss the important theoretical responses offered by semiotics. Providing a much-needed introductory guide to the subject, Petrilli and Ponzio explore the ever-growing frontiers of semiotics through the thought of prominent sign scholars such as Charles Peirce, Victoria Welby, Mikhail Bakhtin, Charles Morris, and Thomas Sebeok. In an era of global communication, a global approach is necessary, and what may seem to be the whole, is only a part – a view being at once globalizing and open. Each and every sign is never self-sufficient and closed but exists always in a relation of otherness. This is true of the signs forming animals and human beings, individuals and communities, and involves the implication of all living beings in the life of all others. Semiotics Unbounded offers a new and original survey of the science of signs, evaluating it in relation to the problems of our time, not only of a scientific order, but also the problems concerning everyday social life.