Gestures in the Sub-Saharan region (original) (raw)
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To what extent do African studies refocus our understanding of gestures
The paper aims to provide an overview of the most important aspects and characteristic features of the gestures used in sub-Saharan Africa. Firstly, the article includes a discussion of the development of gesture studies and the methods of scrutinizing gestures. Later, several factors (social stratification, culture, orality and language) that influence the use of gestures in Africa are analyzed. It is claimed that these factors have an impact on some fundamental issues connected with gesture studies such as the definition or classification of gestures. The discussion leads to the conclusion that rather than the psychological or cognitive, it is the communicative aspect of gestures that seems to be crucial for research throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
Studies in African Languages and Cultures, 2018
The paper shows a close relationship between speech and gestures by arguing that in oral utterances the verbal part is one of the components of the message, while the other is embedded in gesture. The analysis is based on a few hours of recordings containing natural discourse, mainly sermons preached by Hausa sheiks and religious leaders from Northern Nigeria. The focus is put on the use of a recurrent gesture referred to as the "dusting off palms" gesture. The semantic core of the gesture based on the contextual analysis shows that it refers to cleaning , mental dirt, rejection, termination and totality. The link between all of these notions is to be found in the action which gave rise to the gesture: dusting off palms after a manual job.
Gesture in Modern South Arabian languages
Brill’s Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics
Until fairly recently most linguistic fieldwork relied on written records of spoken data or audio-only recordings. The recent increase in research focusing on audio-visual data, with emphasis on the co-expressiveness of speech and gesture, has led to a greater understanding of the relationship between language, gesture and thought. In this paper, we discuss gesture and what it illuminates linguistically in two Modern South Arabian Languages: Mehri and Śḥerɛ̄t.
The Significance of African Sign Languages for
Sign languages are the natural languages of deaf people and deaf communities. In the past 50 years, an impressive number of sign languages have come to be studied from a modern linguistic perspective, generating ground-breaking insights into the influence of the communicative channel on language structure. However, only a handful of these studies concern sign languages on the African continent. This is striking, particularly in view of the rich diversity of sign languages and signing communities found in Africa. Despite being limited in number, the studies available on African sign languages reveal unique structural features, not attested in non-African sign languages so far. Thus, research on African sign languages is important for the typology of sign languages, as well as for the general typology of African languages. The diversity in signing communities in sociolinguistic terms offer valuable opportunities for studying the impact of social setting on sign language structure; an issue of current debate in the sign language literature. Studies on African sign languages are relevant for a number of domains in general linguistics as well, including language contact, change, shift, acquisition, creation, and emergence. Last but not least, the scientific examination of African sign languages is of major importance for the emancipation and participation of deaf African in society.
Glottodidactica. An International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2018
From all the examples of nonverbal behaviour it has been scientifically proved that gestures reflect human thoughts and mental operations. Gestures project meanings that are stored in image schemas. Those mental representations are shaped by culturally determined experience. The aim of this article was to delve into the issue of the cross-cultural differences in nonverbal behaviour with the par-ticular focus on gestures from the point of view of cognitive linguistics. It was also of my interest to identify and categorise gestures as regards their universal and/or culture specific nature and create a background for possible further research.
The Significance of African Sign Languages for African Linguistics and Sign Language Studies
2015
Sign languages are the natural languages of deaf people and deaf communities. In the past 50 years, an impressive number of sign languages have come to be studied from a modern linguistic perspective, generating ground-breaking insights into the influence of the communicative channel on language structure. However, only a handful of these studies concern sign languages on the African