Language and Communication in Signed Language Linguistics

As in linguistics generally, our understanding of the distinction between language and other forms of communication in signed language research is very much a work in progress. Prior to the seminal work of Stokoe (1960), the signed languages of deaf communities were often considered by linguists to be gestural, and thus 'non-linguistic' forms of communication (Bloomfield, 1933). Since 1960, however, attempts have increasingly been made to describe all aspects of the visual-gestural communication of signed languages as part of a morphosyntactic system. In particular, signed language researchers working within the generative paradigm have proposed analyses of head and eye movements during signing and the meaningful placement and pointing of signs in space as inflectional morphemes marking person agreement (Aronoff, Meir, Padden & Sandler, 2003; Mathur, 2000; Neidle, Kegl, MacLaughlin, Bahan & Lee, 2000). These claims appear not to have taken into account a growing literature that indicates clear parallels in the use of space in signed languages and gesture accompanying speech, and in particular, an increasing recognition of gesture as an integral part of language itself (Emmorey & Herzig, 2003; McNeill, 2000; Okrent, 2002). In this paper, I will explore the role of spatial, non-manual and gradient phenomena, and show that 'linguistic' and 'non-linguistics' elements are integrated in a way that may be unique to signed languages, as argued by Cogill (2003) and Liddell (2003). This emerging view of signed languages as 'heterogeneous' communication systems represents a paradigm shift in our understanding of signed language structure, but it may not be as a radical as it first appears. Instead, this approach acknowledges that both speech and sign interact with gesture and other 'non-linguistic' communication in meaningful ways, but Liddell (2003) suggests that what is specific to signed language is that the need to gesture is met by creating classes of lexical units which combine aspects of language and gesture in the same form.