Signed Language and Gesture Research in Cognitive Linguistics

✍ Scribed by Terry Janzen (editor); Barbara Shaffer (editor)

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 482
• Series: Cognitive Linguistics Research [CLR]; 67
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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. Wilcoxs 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. Wilcoxs 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.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Contents
Foreword
Introduction: Examining signed language and gesture research within the domain of cognitive linguistics
I Guiding principles for signed and spoken language research
Through the signed language glass: Changing and converging views in spoken and signed language research
Coming back to the issue of the graphic representation of signed language discourse in signed language linguistics
What is a language? A socio-semiotic approach to signed and spoken languages
II Iconicity in spoken and signed language
Structure, iconicity, and access
When hands are things and movements are processes: Cognitive iconicity, embodied cognition, and signed language structure
III Multimodality
Gestural meaning is in the body(-space) as much as in the hands
A Place for joint action in multimodal constructions
What I know is here; what I don’t know is somewhere else: Deixis and gesture spaces in American Sign Language and Irish Sign Language
Insights on the use of narrative perspectives in signed and spoken discourse in Quebec Sign Language, American Sign Language, and Quebec French
IV Blending and metaphor
Exploring Real Space blends as indicators of discourse complexity in Swedish Sign Language
Metaphors and blending in Italian Sign Language discourse: A window on the interaction of language and thought
V Grammatical constructions
The mouth shrug and facial consent in Danish Sign Language
Usage-based grammar: Multi-word expressions in American Sign Language
Possibility modals in Brazilian Sign Language and Argentine Sign Language: A contrastive study
The semantics of relative clause constructions in Iranian Sign Language
VI Concluding commentary
Language in the light of sign and gesture
Index