Distinguished speaker 2019: Dr Adam Schembri

Sign languages as ‘super languages’? Evidence from the use of space in British Sign Language

Dr Adam Schembri (University of Birmingham)

Recently, Schlenker (2018) suggested that sign languages may be “more expressive” than spoken languages because iconicity appears to form part of the grammar of sign languages in ways that may be different to what we see in spoken languages. Indeed, in a media release from New York University, Schlenker referred to sign languages as ‘super languages’ because of their unique properties. In this paper, I examine recent work on one aspect of iconicity – the use of space in British Sign Language verbs to signal who is doing what to whom (Cormier et al., 2015; Fenlon et al., 2018; Schembri et al., 2018) – and discuss to what extent this feature can be seen as “more expressive” than equivalent systems in spoken languages.  In addition, I will discuss the importance of comparing sign languages with speech and gesture working together, rather than speech alone, and how sign languages contribute to our understanding of multichannel and multimodal aspects of human communication in general.

If you plan to attend the talk and need simultaneous interpretation in BSL, please contact language@leeds.ac.uk before the 1st of March.