Understanding International Sign: A sociolinguistic study by Lori A. Whynot (review)

Deaf people's capacity to negotiate communication across different native sign languages has long been appreciated in the deaf world as a visual-language advantage. In recent decades a particular variety of 'transnational' signing has been promulgated by deaf leaders in international deaf domains of advocacy, sport, and academia; although the capitalized name suggests that International Sign (IS) is a fully conventional code, it is better described as a dynamic type of contact language that takes shape when deaf people from various countries interact in a sustained manner for specific purposes. Motivated by her experience with IS as a sign language interpreter working at international events, Lori Whynot set out to investigate an overarching question: How 'universally' comprehensible is expository IS as used in such contexts? Her doctoral research tackled this question by making a corpus of authentic IS texts by deaf conference presenters, analyzing linguistic features of the corpus, and then experimentally testing comprehension of texts by demographically diverse deaf audiences. This book reports on the findings of this research, and as such comprises the most theoretically and empirically ambitious description, to date, of the semiotic features, use, and comprehension of IS texts.

Ch. 1 introduces the emergence and definitions of IS ('a range of semiotic strategies of interlocutors in multilingual sign language situations'; p. 1). Historical context and applied issues around the use of IS at international deaf events are described; for instance, W comments that the (increasing) provision of 'interpretation via an unstable contact language [rather than via native sign languages] has not been without controversy' (21). Concerns include the precision of information that IS can (or cannot) convey, and that the lexicon typically used in IS is more accessible to some language groups than others. Justifying this research, W also notes that training and standards for IS interpreting (or even direct use) are not yet firmly grounded in empirical documentation of a 'moving target'.

Ch. 2 reviews the small literature showing that IS employs grammatical structures commonly found across native sign languages, and that a limited 'conventional' lexicon is supplemented by gestural, depicting, spatial, and other semiotic strategies (such as shared context). Previous studies indicate that American Sign Language (ASL; used in the US) and British Sign Language (BSL; UK) are key sources of IS vocabulary, and that lexical sources vary by user and context (Woll 1990, Rosenstock 2004), prompting W's question about its comprehensibility outside the sphere of North America and Europe. Some previous studies have described features of IS (e.g. Allsop et al. 1995, Supalla & Webb 1995) or examined its use by interpreters (McKee & Napier 2002, Moody 2002); however, gaps remain in the description of IS and in the measurement of how well diverse deaf audiences make sense of IS texts. W's study brings corpus-based and experimental evidence to critical consideration of questions not yet fully addressed in the existing literature.

A cognitivist framework has lately been applied to the analysis of lexico-grammar in signed languages (e.g. Taub 2001, Liddell 2003, Wilcox 2004), and W adopts this theoretical lens in Ch.3 to frame a very informative overview of semiotic elements that characterize signed languages, including iconicity and metaphor, gesture, enactment, depiction, referential use of space, and lexicalized and productive signs. This account previews the types of elements that are identified in W's corpus of IS and that feature in her comprehension experiment. This chapter establishes meaning making as the author's central concern, reminding us that constructing and construing meaning from linguistic symbols entails complex interaction between speaker and observer cognition, other semiotic strategies, and the usage context.

Ch. 4 explains the data and methods. The research design (which is impressively rigorous), sampling, procedures, and instruments are detailed, supporting validity and enabling replication of the study. Five appendices illustrate the nature of the corpus, transcription and annotation conventions, and instruments used to assess comprehension. W's discussion of methodological challenges (e.g. gloss-transcribing...