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Analysing British Sign Language Through the Lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics

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Analysing British Sign Language Through the Lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics ANALYSING BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE THROUGH THE LENS OF SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS LUKE ANDREW RUDGE A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of the West of England, Bristol for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries and Education, University of the West of England, Bristol March 2018 Material in this thesis is the author's with the exception of third party material where appropriate permissions have been obtained and attributed. In particular, videos presenting BSL in use (of which URLs are made available throughout this thesis) were created by and remain property of the author. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that no use of material may be made without proper acknowledgement. ii Acknowledgements The past three years can be summarised in one word: transition. Many things have changed during this time, including aspects of my environment and of myself. Yet, despite these changes, there are many people around me who have been a constant. It is here that I wish to thank them. To my supervisors, Jeanette Sakel and Anna Piasecki: thank you for guiding me and pushing me further; for being there when I needed you; for supporting the many opportunities I’ve had over the past three years; for being honest about the world of academia; and for providing direction while encouraging flexibility in my own decisions. To James Murphy: thank you for your honesty and your wit, your advice and your humour, your analytical perspectives and your ‘moderate cynicism’ (and for the lifts to and from Frenchay when the bus wasn’t an option!). To John Mancini, Martin Hughes, and the staff of ICS Bristol: thank you for helping me to improve my fluency in BSL, for your assistance during data collection, and for the opportunities to share my knowledge with your students. To the participants and data assistants of this study: thank you for giving me your time, and for allowing me to work with your language. To the administrative and library staff of UWE: thank you for always guiding me to the answer that I needed, without fail. To Lise Fontaine and the many systemic functional linguists and around the world: thank you for your guidance, your invitations to take part in events, and for the resources that you have made available to promote a greater awareness of SFL. To my undergraduate students: thank you for showing your passion and intrigue for the study of languages and linguistics (which I hope that you maintain for a very long time). iii To Victoria Punch: thank you for our lunchtime meet-ups filled with hot chocolate and signing, and for the regular check-ups to see how I was getting on. To Becci and Kelly: thank you for the relaxing evenings and weekends filled with food, drinks and adventure, and for having the appropriate meme at the ready to share on WhatsApp at any given moment! To the many academics in the Twitterverse: thank you for your knowledge, advice, humour and praise, despite the differences between time zones. To my parents, Linda and Andy Rudge: thank you for being the most supportive and caring parents anyone could ask for, and for knowing exactly what to say or do no matter what the situation. And last but by no means least, to David: thank you for always bearing with me, for coping with my late-night panicking, for encouraging me to keep going, and for being a smiling face, a big hug, and a warm heart to return home to every day. TQM. iv Abstract Approaches to understanding language via Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) have resulted in a compendium of literature focussing on language as a ‘social semiotic.’ One such area of this literature comprises systemic functional grammars: descriptions of various languages and the way in which they create meaning. Despite the application of SFL to numerous languages and the creation of systemic functional grammars, a common thread is that of modality: SFL has been applied to numerous languages in the spoken and written modalities, but not in any detail to languages in the visual-spatial modality. My thesis presents an initial attempt at analysing British Sign Language (BSL) through the systemic functional lens. Calling on various theories and methods found in sign linguistics and SFL, I perform an analysis on a sample of BSL clauses (N = 1,375) from three perspectives: how BSL manages exchanges of communication (the interpersonal metafunction); how BSL encodes aspects of experience and reality (the experiential metafunction); and how BSL may be organised to produce a coherent text with variance in information prominence (the textual metafunction). As a result, I present three sets of system networks based on these three metafunctions, complete with realisation statements and examples. This thesis provides considerable impact. From an academic perspective, this is the first in-depth systemic functional description of a language in the visual-spatial modality, providing insight both into how such languages function, and how analyses of these languages may feed back into those of spoken and written languages. From a social perspective, the BSL system networks can assist language learners of any level as a point of reference in clause construction. Furthermore, intermediate and higher BSL qualifications stipulate knowledge of sign linguistics as a required component, yet these assessments are based on resources that have not been updated in nearly twenty years. As such, the products of this thesis may go towards informing future BSL assessments. Word count: 75,833 v Table of Contents Acknowledgements ······································································································· iii Abstract ···························································································································v Table of Contents ·········································································································· vi List of tables ····················································································································x List of figures ················································································································ xi List of appendices ······································································································· xiii Abbreviations and sign language short-codes ····························································· xiv Conventions used in this thesis ···················································································· xv Glosses ·············································································································································· xv System networks ······························································································································ xv 1. Introduction ············································································································ 1 1.1. Research rationale ················································································································ 1 1.2. Chapters: overviews, contributions and notes ···································································· 3 1.3. Areas outside of the scope of my thesis··············································································· 7 1.4. A note on cultural labels ······································································································ 7 1.5. My position as a hearing researcher ·················································································· 9 2. Sociocultural and linguistic aspects of British Sign Language································ 11 2.1. Introduction ························································································································· 11 2.2. A brief history of the languages of Deaf communities ···················································· 12 2.3. Contemporary BSL ·············································································································· 15 2.4. Linguistics in the visual-spatial modality ········································································· 17 2.4.1. What is not BSL? ······································································································· 17 2.4.2. Phonology ·················································································································· 20 2.4.3. Morphology ··············································································································· 24 2.4.4. Syntax ························································································································· 29 2.5. Further linguistic notes on BSL ························································································· 35 2.5.1. The two lexicons of BSL and their sign types ························································· 35 2.5.2. The signing space and productive simultaneity ···················································· 37 2.5.3. Constructed action and constructed dialogue ·······················································38 2.5.4. Fingerspelling·············································································································39 vi 2.5.5. Manual gestures and manual signs ········································································ 40 2.6. Conclusion ···························································································································
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