Sign Languages of Aboriginal Australia: Cultural, Semiotic and Communicative Perspectives by Adam Kendon (review)

REVIEW: Sign Languages of Aboriginal Australia: Cultural, Semiotic and Communicative Perspectives, by Adam Kendon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1988. xviii & 542pp. Cloth. ISBN 0521 -36008-0. With Sign Languages of Aboriginal Australia (hereafter SLAA), Adam Kendon has written a solid scholarly work. Quite possibly it is the most thorough and detailed work ever produced on the subject (461 pages of text, plus two appendices). Kendon's many years of careful study of Australian Aboriginal sign languages , as well as his well-known expertise in the field of gesture communication studies more generally, are reflected in this volume . The book includes a linguistic study of the structure of these languages as well as ethnographic observations on their use. Longer on description than on analysis, it nevertheless offers many thoughtful insights into the ethnology of the natives of the North Central Desert, including the motivations for their use of these languages. Published in 1988, the book will be-and indeed has beenenthusiastically received by ethnographers and linguists who, like this reviewer, are interested in alternate sign languages. Those whose focus of interest lies in the study of primary sign languages will find this work to be a valuable source for comparison between primary and alternate sign languages. Semioticians will find much material of interest in the book as well. The book is organized into fourteen chapters, including: an introduction; a history of the study of the sign languages of Aboriginal Australia; a geographical review of their distribution; a full chapter on the North Central Desert area, where Kendon has conducted much of his field work over a considerable period of time; a chapter each on sign structure; sign form and meaning; sign organization and word structure; signing spoken language grammar; discourse in sign and speech; signing and speaking simultaneously; signs ofkinship; comparisons of these languages to one another; comparison with other sign languages, both primary and alternate; and Aboriginal interaction and sign language. @1992 Linstok Press, Inc. ISSN 0302-1475 SLS 76 What follows are comments on several of the chaptersthough not in order of their occurrence in the book. One of the most interesting chapters in the book is Chapter 13, which compares the sign languages of Aboriginal Australia to other semiotic systems, including primary and alternate sign languages , oral and acoustic language codes, and graphic language codes. Kendon observes that, in contrast to primary sign languages -which appear to have very similar modes of grammatical expression to each other (and exploit possibilities of space for grammatical relations, use a "layered" inflectional system, and classifier forms) because of their exclusive reliance on the kinesic medium for linguistic expression-alternate sign languages seem to represent spoken language structure. This theme, in fact, that alternate sign languages are based on spoken language structure, is a prominent one in the book. Even among the most accomplished signers, Kendon maintains, it is spoken language structure that is represented and there is no tendency for expert signers to become more grounded in sign-language-like structures. Deaf Aborigines do not, moreover, appear to become fluent in these alternate sign languages, but rather employ an improvised sign system developed within their family circle. As for other alternate sign languages, Kendon compares the Australian to Plains Indian signing (which has not been determined to be based on a specific language, most probably because its main function, at least in its most recent past, was as a lingua franca).He compares also the Cistercian monastic sign language which, in the abbey observed (by Barakat, 1973), is more clearly based on a specific spoken language (English) and makes use of signs that represent spoken words or syllables rather than meanings (a kind of rebus signing referred to by Kendon as a "kinesic syllabary"). This alternate sign language provides an exception to Kendon's general thesis that: Alanguage code that develops ina visual medium, whether kinesic or graphic, will develop inthe first instance as an encoding of the semantic units of the spoken language, not of its phonetic units. (p.438) Kendon attributes the tendency to represent phonetic units in the Sectarian sign language to the fact that the users of it are literate . But, as Kendon suggests, rather too briefly, the...