(Don’t) Write My Lips: Interpretations of the Relationship Between German Sign Language and German Across Scales of SignWriting Practice

Abstract

Perceptions of boundaries between communicative codes and the modalities through which they are produced and perceived are mediated by social actors’ particular communicative repertoires and histories. I focus in particular on how the affordances of SignWriting (SW), a writing system for sign languages that has been adapted in Germany to additionally inscribe the physical movements by which spoken languages are produced, reveal and affect users’ diverse interpretations of the relationship between German Sign Language (DGS) and German. I examine the production and interpretation of DGS SW texts on two different scales: a classroom in Germany and a transnational, multilingual online network of SignWriters with whom classroom participants engage.

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Publication Date

1-1-2013

Publication Title

Signs and Society

Department

Anthropology

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.1086/672321

Language

English

Format

text

Link to Full Text

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