Empirical Research on Mouth Patterns considering Sociolinguistic Factors: A Comparison between the Use of Mouth Patterns of Deaf L1- and Hearing L2-Users of German Sign (DGS) Lisa Monschein, University of Hamburg, Institute of German and Communication of the Deaf

Theory Empirical Research – Pilot Study Mouth Patterns: 5 Participants in 2 Groups – mouth gestures genuine part of sign group 1: – mouthings originating from speech contact; deaf native signers part of the system of sign languages only to a certain extent (cf. Lu c a s /Va ll i 1992) (n = 3) group 2: sign language interpreters Continuum of Language Modes: Sociolinguistic Factors have an Effect on: who acquired DGS as a second language Language A – the sociolinguistic variation in one language (n = 2) (base language) – the occurence of language contact phenomena (nonce borrowing, codeswitching (cf. Bo y e s 4 Stimuli Br a e m 2001)) – picture story (Jakob story, no language) → narrated twice by the native → Both variation and language contact phenomena signers, once to a deaf and monolingual bilingual 1 2 3 once to a hearing addressee language language have an effect on the occurence of mouth patterns. mode mode – single picture (fairy tale, no language) → Contact between sign and spoken language leads – text (short news report) to different phenomena than known for uni-modal – interview (last holiday) language contact.

Language B „A visual-gestural means of communication offers combinatory possibilities that a spoken language (cf. Gr o s j e a n 2008: 40) does not allow for.“ Transcription of the Data b b i n g h a u s e s s m a n n (E /H 2001: 150) using iLex (cf. Ha n k e /St o r z 2008) (cf. Emm o r e y e t a l . 2008) with an individual set of labels to annotate mouth gestures Sociolinguistic Factors having an Impact on Language Use: tiers: • signs – speaker, addressee, audience • mouthings (region, gender, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, hearing status, age of acquistion) • mouth gestures – setting • parts of speech • instructions (interviewer) (style, content, and purpose of the conversation; in research: research question, elicitation material) • remarks (transcriber) (cf. La b o v 1970: 188; Lu c a s /Ba y l e y /Va ll i 2003: 21; Gr o s j e a n 2008: 150) elicitated data: Sign Language Interpreters: 70 minutes; full transtription and – often said to use a different kind of sign language than deaf sign language users analysis of (cf. Me y e n n /We m p e 2006) 21 minutes – one possible reason: sociolinguistic factors – hearing status and (typically) sign language as L2 Evaluation Hypotheses: – frequency and distribution of mouth patterns with respect to 1. The occurences of mouthings and mouth gestures in the sign language productions of deaf • the two groups of informants as well as the individuals • the stimuli natives and hearing L2-users differ both in quality and quantity. • addressees with different hearing status 2. Other factors such as the addressee’s hearing status and the kind of text produced will also have • parts of speech an effect on the use of mouth patterns. • stretched and reduced mouthings 3. The stronger the influence of the spoken language in a setting, the higher the frequency of – qualitative analysis of combinations of signed & spoken mouthings and the more codeswitches will occur. components (on base of categories extablished by La n g e r /Be n t e l e /Ko n r a d (2002)) – research design and methodology

Selected Results Quantitatively Qualitatively There are combinations of signed and spoken components – both percentage of signs accompanied by in the productions of hearing L2- and deaf L1-users – which are not a class of mouth patterns or without (yet) part of DGS and must be considered as codeswitches or nonce any of the mouth borrowings. Hypothesis 1: – Phrases or sentences need to be considered in addition to - There are no significant combinations of only one sign and one spoken component as some differences with regard to the expressions might seem like pure sign language on the lexical level, but not on a syntactical level. averages for individual informants. + Responses to different stimuli – Difficult to judge: Often it is not possible to draw a distinct line show differences in the use of between what still is DGS and what is not. mouth patterns between hearing → need for deaf native judges (cf. Lu c a s /Va ll i 1992) L2- and deaf L1-users of DGS. – Hearing L2-users seem to use mouthings to specify the meaning of a sign or give supplementary meaning the sign does not include.

Conclusions – Sociolinguistic factors (e.g. hearing status, age of acquisition, addressee, type of text) do have an effect on sign language production and mouth patterns in particular and have to be considered with regard to the elicitation of data. – More factors which are potentially crucial have to be identified by further research. picture story text interview – Hypothesis: The education factor outweighs the other factors. Hypothesis 2: Hypothesis 3: + The frequency of mouth patterns depends + The high frequency of mouthings in References:

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