Skip to main content

Sadler Seminar Series Signs Beyond Borders: Meaning-making across sign and spoken languages’

Date
Date
Friday 15 December 2017
1pm - 3pm LHRI seminar room 1

Colleagues are warmly welcome to the third session of the Sadler Seminar Series ‘Signs Beyond Borders: Meaning-making across sign and spoken languages’. This seminar ocuses on urban contexts and neighbourhoods.

'A multimodal analysis of customer interactions between deaf (blind) and hearing people in Mumbai'
Presenter: Annelies Kusters, Heriot-Watt University

The data that will be shared during this session focuses on fluent deaf and deafblind signers and hearing non-signers in Mumbai who use gestures to communicate with each other, often combined with mouthing, speaking and/or writing in different languages.

The data were gathered through linguistic ethnography in markets, shops, food joints and public transport in Mumbai.
Within gesture-based interactions, people with sensorial asymmetries (i.e. deaf vs. hearing) combined the visual-gestural modality and certain features of the auditory-oral modality, and/or switched between modalities. A deafblind participant made use of visible and tactile gesturing including pointing at and tapping on objects (to indicate them), using emblematic gestures, and tracing the shape of objects on the hand. Interlocutors orient towards the ongoing interaction and negotiate the constraints and possibilities imposed not only by different modalities but also by different sensorial access to these modalities.

The seminar will take the following structure. During the first hour the speakers will present the data followed by a group discussion. The focus for the second hour will be on the data itself and on exploring the modal complexity of the scenarios and the modal intensity of individual contributions.

This is a free event and open to all. You are warmly welcome to attend the first half of the seminar or the full seminar.

For directions to the LHRI see here: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/20045/leeds_humanities_research_institute/2567/contact_us

For further information about the seminar series see here: https://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/20045/leeds_humanities_research_institute/3080/signs_beyond_borders_meaning-making_across_sign_and_spoken_languages

If you have any questions please contact Jessica Bradley (j.m.bradley.ac.uk).

Signs Beyond Borders is convened by Elisabetta Adami in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, with Ruth Swanwick and James Simpson in the School of Education. External collaborators are Annelies Kusters (Heriot-Watt) and Christopher Stone (Wolverhampton).