‘Authentic signing equals creative signing’: new perspectives on the enregisterment of creative language use in German Sign Language

• Hanna Jaeger ^[1] ; Sarah Harzer ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Leipzig

     University of Leipzig

     Kreisfreie Stadt Leipzig, Alemania

     
• Localización: Lingua: International review of general linguistics, ISSN 0024-3841, Nº 217, 2019, págs. 90-100
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Based on qualitative analysis of signed data generated in the context of ten focus groups conducted with 31 deaf signers throughout Germany, the paper explores how deaf users of German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS) position themselves in conversational settings. It will be shown that creatively manipulating the visual-spatial articulatory resources of DGS, the protagonists subtly but clearly delineate themselves from others, socially positioning themselves not only as rather skillful, but even more crucially, as authentic signers. Examining the enregisterment of creative language use (CLU) as indexical of authentic signing within the DGS community, the paper paves new ground by proposing that Agha's framework of enregisterment can be meaningfully applied not only to signed languages, but also to much wider, ‘softer’ conceptual categories as well.