Bilingualism and Identity in Deaf Communities

Semiotic Aspects of Argentine Sign Language: Analysis of a Videotaped "Interview"

204 The authors wish to thank Gilda Bona for her careful reading and comments. Semiotic Aspects of Argentine Sign Language: Analysis of a Videotaped “Interview” María Ignacia Massone and Rosana Famularo An examination of the semiotic aspects of a language involves asking questions such as: What is a text? What are the characteristics of an interview ? What semiotic value does television have, especially when we analyze an interview with a Deaf signer? Although all of these questions deserve our attention, we explain each concept briefly in this chapter.1 We intend to clarify some of the functions of these different aspects in order to understand their interrelationships in the corpus analyzed. First, it is important to explain that all the communicative interactions among Deaf people in Argentina are conversational. Sign languages have an oral tradition, that is to say, they are transmitted from generation to generation in face-to-face communication. Several types of linguistic contact situations exist among Deaf people or among Deaf and hearing people (Massone and Menéndez 1997). Such interactions constitute oral exchanges as a series of events whose whole conforms to a text that it produces in a given context. According to van Dijk (1978), an interaction is also an action that affects , alters, or maintains the relationships that participants establish in face-to-face communication. Van Dijk also implies that such relationships include those between the elements of a text as well as those that are created by the exchange between the participants. Discourse is thus conceived as the product of an interactive process based on a number of agreements that are sometimes spontaneous and at other times in need of the intervention of transaction procedures or negotiations. The participants in all Semiotic Aspects of Argentine Sign Language : 205 verbal exchanges should agree on the formal rules that govern the particular verbal game that they are playing. We thus define discourse as human communication, whether it is written , oral, graphic, etc. But no matter how the discourse originates, ultimately , text is what the analyst must work with. Comprising a series of statements, a text is the product of discursive action, characterized by its relationships and resulting from cohesive features and from illocutionary and perlocutionary forces. Therefore, a text can be analyzed by conceptualizing the discursive rules that produce it. This perception of discourse implies the recognition of a dynamic structure that surpasses it even though it is manifested in and by the text. In many instances the text is a linguistic materialization of such rules of discourse. Although different in nature, a visual image may also be analyzed as text when it possesses these prescribed properties. An interview is an essentially conversational situation with a formal hierarchy that defines the relationship between the participants. The interviewer conducts the discursive event, and the interviewee occupies a subordinate position. According to Labov (1983), the speech of the interviewee is formal because it is public, directed, and controlled in response to the presence of an outside observer. On the other hand, as every linguistic interchange may be compared to a marketplace in which valuable linguistic “goods” are exchanged, the interview may be seen as a linguistic “marketplace” in which the sociological relationships of the participants , the potential audience, and the video filming and editing teams are considered. Television designs a global assembly that conveys reflection because it has been edited. What is seen is the final product of the complex process of editing. This process presupposes not only the physical act of editing, but also interpretation by the editors. The images that television produces must guarantee, on the other hand, the reality of what they show because they are seen by an audience, even though their “reality” must also be interpreted by the audience. An implication process exists with regard to the audience, which participates in the ongoing presentation of images and texts. Researchers have shown that the theatrical nature of television thus implies social and communicative relationships mediated by images. There always exists equivalence in images and never similarity with the history of the world as it is always interpreted by the editors, directors, and so on. That is to say, television or any filmed product is a semiotic realization that conveys plural 206 : m a r í a i g n a c i a m a s s o n e & r o s a n a f a m u...