Taboo in Sign Languages

✍ Scribed by Donna Jo Napoli

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 98
• Series: Elements in Sign Languages
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Taboo topics in deaf communities include the usual ones found in spoken languages, as well as ones particular to deaf experiences, both in how deaf people relate to hearing people and how deaf people interact with other deaf people. Attention to these topics can help linguists understand better the consequences of field method choices and lead them to adopt better ones. Taboo expressions in American Sign Language are innovative regarding the linguistic structures they play with. This creativity is evident across the grammar in non-taboo expressions, but seems to revel in profane ones. When it comes to the syntax, however, certain types of structures occur in taboo expressions that are all but absent elsewhere, showing grammatical possibilities that might have gone unnoticed without attention to taboo. Taboo expressions are innovative, as well, in how they respond to changing culture, where lexical items that are incoherent with community sensibilities are 'corrected'.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title page
Copyright page
Taboo in Sign Languages
Contents
1 Taboo
1.1 Background: Taboo Expressions Are Special
1.2 Taboo and Sign Languages
1.3 Deaf People in a Hearing-Dominated World
1.3.1 Linguistic and Cultural Appropriation
1.3.2 Issues Involving Identity
1.3.3 Hearing Privilege
1.3.4 Exploitation
1.4 Deaf People within Deaf Communities
1.4.1 Hierarchies and Tension within Deaf Communities: the American
Context
1.4.2 Auditory Status, Facility with Signing, and Cochlear Implants
1.4.3 Subgroups That Comprise Deaf Communities in America
1.4.4 Gender and Race Diversity within Deaf Communities
2 Data Gathering
3 Taboo across the Grammar of ASL
3.1 Taboo Terms and the Lexicon
3.1.1 Manual Letter Handshapes
3.1.2 Exploitation of Connotations Associated with Phonological
Parameters
3.1.3 Compounding and Incorporation
3.1.4 Blending
3.1.5 Combinations
3.1.6 Implications
3.2 Taboo Expressions and the Syntax
3.2.1 Syntactically Isolated Taboo Terms
3.2.2 Syntactically Embedded Taboo Terms
3.2.3 Resultative Taboo Classifier Sentences Used as Emphasizers
3.3 Nonlexical Ways of Conveying Taboo-Level Rudeness, Insults,
or Emphasis: Phonetic Properties and the Nonmanuals
3.3.1 Nonmanuals
3.3.2 Mimicry and Manual Codes
3.4 Concluding Remarks
4 Bleached Taboo-Term Predicates in ASL
4.1 Conversion between Ordinary Noun and Predicate
4.2 Predicates Taking Clauses as Their Arguments or as Modifiers
4.2.1 The Predicate GRUELING
4.2.2 The Predicate FUCK-IT
4.2.3 The Predicate FUCK-EVERYTHING/EVERYONE
4.3 Verb Strings
4.4 Concluding Remarks
5 (Sub)Lexical Changes in Iconic Signs to Realign with Community Sensibilities and Experiences
5.1 Background
5.2 Sex-Related Signs and Euphemism
5.3 Corrections
5.3.1 Correction Based on Recognition of and Respect for Identity
5.3.2 Correction Based on Deaf Experiences
5.4 Concluding Remarks
6 Conclusion: What the Study of Taboo Teaches Us
Appendix: Handshapes Referred To
References
Acknowledgements