Does Language Experience affect Perceived Iconicity? (original) (raw)

Does Language Experience affect Perceived Iconicity? When operationalizing ‘iconicity’ in signed languages, researchers often conflate iconicity with transparency. Instructions to raters generally include definitions such as, “iconic signs look like what they mean”, and include examples of transparent signs as ‘good examples’ of iconicity (1)(4). As a result, it has become standard practice to utilize non-signers to provide sign iconicity ratings, since transparent mappings should be easily accessible to anyone. Recent research on signers’ evaluation of iconicity across languages has suggested however, that signers rate signs in their native language as more iconic than signs, matched across a variety of measures, in a foreign signed language (3). This suggests that iconicity is subjectively constructed in the minds of language users, and that experience with one’s own language influences perceptions of iconic mappings. One possible explanation of why signers consider signs from their own language to be more iconic than signs from another signed language is that signers’ iconicity judgements are sensitive to language-internal mappings, such as construing the fist with thumb pointing upward as a human body, as opposed to construing the same handshape as an upward pointer indicating positive valence. While any one signed language may include both construals, the extent that one construal is widely prevalent within the language may influence signers’ judgements of iconicity. To investigate this hypothesis, non-signers from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk rated images of 32 ASL signs (with glosses) for iconicity, using a Likert scale given the standard instructions: “how much does the sign look like what it means?” Subsequently, L1-ASL expert signers (14) and English-ASL L2 novice signers (14) viewed ASL sentences containing the same 32 ASL signs and responded with a keypress when they detected target handshapes. ASL proficiency was assessed using the ASL Sentence Reproduction Test (2). Using a mixed linear regression, we found reaction times were significantly modulated by non-signer iconicity ratings for novices, but not for experts. Handshapes in signs with higher iconicity ratings were more quickly identified by signers with lower proficiency, but identified at equal speeds by signers with higher proficiency (β = 1.02, t = 1.87, p = .06). Without taking into account both language internal and language external motivations, investigations of iconicity effects in signed languages run the risk of skewing results toward behaviors that are primarily present early in the second language acquisition process and overlook effects that may change after more complete knowledge of a language’s patterns have been learned and internalized. Further, these results suggest that the construct of iconicity differs along several dimensions, and transparency does not capture all dimensions of the construct. Careful review of the theoretical implications of the definition and operationalization of iconicity will be crucial to future investigations. Bibliography (1) Caselli, Naomi K., Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Ariel M. Cohen-Goldberg, and Karen Emmorey. (2016). “ASL-LEX: A Lexical Database of American Sign Language.” Behavior Research Methods, 1– 18. doi:10.3758/s13428-016-0742-0. (2) Hauser, Peter., Raylene Paludnevičienė, Ted Supalla, and Daphne Bavelier. (2008). “American Sign Language - Sentence Reproduction Test: Development and implications.” In R. de Quadros (Ed.), Sign Language: Spinning and unraveling the past, present and future (pp. 160– 172). Petrópolis, Brazil: Arara Azul. (3) Occhino, Corrine, Benjamin Anible, Jill P. Morford, and Erin Wilkinson. (2017). “Iconicity Is in the Eye of the Beholder: How Language Experience Affects Perceived Iconicity.” Gesture, 16:1, 101–127. doi 10.1075/gest.16.1.04occ. (4) Vinson, David P., Kearsy Cormier, Tanya Denmark, Adam Schembri, and Gabriella Vigliocco. (2008). “The British Sign Language (BSL) Norms for Age of Acquisition, Familiarity, and Iconicity.” Behavior Research Methods, 40, no. 4: 1079–87. doi:10.3758/BRM.40.4.1079. .