During the COVID-19 pandemic, many DeafBlind children were left without access to educational ser... more During the COVID-19 pandemic, many DeafBlind children were left without access to educational services when schools went remote. This article presents findings from a project that brought DeafBlind adults into the homes of DeafBlind children during a historically unprecedented time, when a new language was emerging among DeafBlind people who call themselves “Protactile”. In analyzing interactions between the DeafBlind adults and children, we have gained new insights into how novel communication channels are forged intersubjectively. We focus our analysis on Jelica, a DeafBlind member of the research team and experienced Protactile educator, and her interactions with two DeafBlind children. Grounding her extensive field notes in an anthropological theory on intersubjectivity, her insights show how they gradually became attuned to each other and their environment, thereby laying the foundation for intention attribution and joint attention. Jelica does this, in part, via frequent use of “Protactile taps”, which have attention-modulating and demonstrative functions among adults. Jelica’s taps perform a “meta-channel” function to direct the child to use particular parts of their bodies for communication and exploration. This study shows how Jelica establishes an operable environment, within which the vocabulary and grammar she exposes them to will take on situated meaning. This research builds on previous work on language emergence by showing that both children and adults contribute to language emergence as they adjust to one another in the unfolding of interaction. Finally, this research calls attention to the need for DeafBlind adults to have institutional authority to shape communication practices for DeafBlind children.
The aim of this article is to contribute to anthropological understandings of intersubject- ivity... more The aim of this article is to contribute to anthropological understandings of intersubject- ivity by foregrounding the role of the environment. I begin by reviewing three key approaches that have emerged out of broader debates in the humanities and social sciences. The first mobilizes intersubjectivity as a way of explaining how a coherent social order is (re-)produced, given that the rational choice, for individuals, is to act in their own self-interest. Intersubjectivity in this view is the shared understanding that is achieved when actors adhere to normative constraints on interaction in order to fulfill an unconscious desire to be loved and accepted by others. The second approach to intersubjectivity challenges this idea, arguing that the motivations and expectations that individuals bring to interaction vary across ethnographic contexts, and for some, shared understanding is a false promise that masks the harmful intentions others are likely to have. Intersubjectivity, in this view, is organized by a desire to minimize expos- ure to others. The third approach treats intersubjectivity not as a possible outcome of interaction but as an existential condition that makes meaningful interaction possible. In this article, I put these debates in dialogue with “protactile theory,” which has grown out of a social movement in DeafBlind communities in the United States. Reading protactile theory through the lens of biosemiotics, ecological psychology, and existential phenom- enology, I argue that the medium or “the thing we’re in when we’re together” is the basis of intelligibility for all intersubjective behaviors and capacities; it can define a way of being, is ethnographically graspable, and is central to how humans interact.
Among linguists, psychologists, and anthropologists interested in multimodal communication, much ... more Among linguists, psychologists, and anthropologists interested in multimodal communication, much attention has been paid to the motor activity of the hands. Psychologists have treated the hands as a window onto the mind and as a facilitator of thought. Linguists have treated the hands as articulators of linguistic signs, and linguistic anthropologists have treated the hands as an integral part of broader, interacting semiotic processes. This essay builds on these approaches by attending to DeafBlind observations about the communicative potential of the hands. Hands are what you touch when you meet someone, and their texture, temperature, and movements remain available to you over the course of an interaction. From the hands' qualities, the rest of the person and their environment can be inferred. From this perspective, the hands appear not only as a window onto the mind, as a facilitator of thought, or as an articulator of signs, but also as a kind of appendage to the self-like cilia, left out in the world to register the dynamics of social life. This suggests new methodological possibilities for analyzing the motoric activity of hands as a sociocultural and biosemiotic problem.
Protactile DeafBlind communities in the United States gave up on politeness about a decade ago. I... more Protactile DeafBlind communities in the United States gave up on politeness about a decade ago. I was there when it happened, and the transformation took over my relationships. One key example: I had developed a habit of jumping up and intervening any time a DeafBlind person was “groping around”—touching things, bumping into walls, reaching their hands out into empty space. Groping, to me, meant that the person was lost and needed a guide. To total outsiders, groping seemed improper and in public spaces, I felt their judgements in evaluative gaze or explicit reprimand. However, my protactile friends stopped caring about those judgements and they instructed me not to act. I experienced not-acting as a state of jumpiness or nervousness—like a tick that is difficult to manage. It was years before that response was replaced by a calm curiosity about the knowledge that is acquired when one touches, rather than sees, their environment. I started watching my friends grope and I imaged what they were learning. At that point, perhaps, I became polite in a new way. Not the kind of polite that is grounded in mutual face-vulnerability and strategic manipulation, but rather in what Bergson calls “the art of finding life lovable,” wherein I am attentive to you. I notice how you move and how you think. As in a dream, I discover in myself a “light and mobile sympathy” that allows me to experience some of what you experience, but weightlessly and without effort.
Over the past several decades, linguists have accumulated evidence for "engagement systems"-a typ... more Over the past several decades, linguists have accumulated evidence for "engagement systems"-a type of grammatical system that has the special role of facilitating intersubjective engagement. Meanwhile, anthropologists and sociologists have shown the many ways that intersubjective engagement is accomplished without special linguistic resources, depending instead on interactional and social structures and capacities. This has raised a question about whether or not intersubjective grammar, as such, really matters. This article addresses that question by examining interactions between DeafBlind people at a time when new engagement systems were emerging alongside new ways of being Deaf-Blind. Building on more than a decade of research tracking the emergence of those systems, I show how they are deployed strategically for broader socio-political purposes. I conclude by proposing that for a typology of engagement systems, deep ethnographic inquiry conducted alongside linguistic description and interactional analysis will allow us to understand not only how those systems are structured, but why they matter for the people who use them.
In this article, we analyze the grammatical incorporation of demonstratives in a tactile language... more In this article, we analyze the grammatical incorporation of demonstratives in a tactile language, emerging in communities of DeafBlind signers in the US who communicate via reciprocal, tactile channels-a practice known as "protactile." In the first part of the paper, we report on a synchronic analysis of recent data, identifying four types of "taps," which have taken on different functions in protacitle language and communication. In the second part of the paper, we report on a diachronic analysis of data collected over the past 8 years. This analysis reveals the emergence of a new kind of "propriotactic" tap, which has been co-opted by the emerging phonological system of protactile language. We link the emergence of this unit to both demonstrative taps, and backchanneling taps, both of which emerged earlier. We show how these forms are all undergirded by an attention-modulation function, more or less backgrounded, and operating across different semiotic systems. In doing so, we contribute not only to what is known about demonstratives in tactile languages, but also to what is known about the role of demonstratives in the emergence of new languages.
In this paper, a novel wearable haptic device, to be worn on the hand and forearm, is introduced.... more In this paper, a novel wearable haptic device, to be worn on the hand and forearm, is introduced. Using the modalities of vibration, pressure, and heat application, the device attempts to replicate four core components of communication. The four components-co-presence, phatic communication, back-channeling, and direction giving-are simulated through haptic profiles individually unique to a section or combined as an encompassing system of the device. This paper evaluates the performance of the device through three testing phases with sighted-hearing and DeafBlind individuals. Results indicate that a strong majority of the tested haptic profiles show statistical significance in replication between individuals. This work is unique in its collaboration with the protactile DeafBlind community, individuals who communicate solely through touch, by furthering understanding on how to generate intuitive tactile profiles in wearable haptic devices.
A new phonological system is becoming conventional across a group of DeafBlind signers in the Uni... more A new phonological system is becoming conventional across a group of DeafBlind signers in the United States who communicate via reciprocal, tactile channels-a practice known as 'Protactile'. The recent conventionalization of protactile phonology is analyzed in this article. Research on emergent visual signed languages has demonstrated that conventionalization is not a single monolithic process, but a complex of principles involving patterns of distribution-discreteness, stability, and productivity of form-as form becomes linked with meaning in increasingly stable ways. Conventionalization of protactile phonology involves assigning specific grammatical roles to the four hands (and arms) of signer 1 ('conveyer') and signer 2 ('receiver') in 'proprioceptive constructions' (PCs)-comparable to 'classifier constructions' in visual signed languages. Analyzing PCs offers new insights into how the conventionalization of a phonological system can play out in the tactile modality.*
This article is concerned with the re-channeling of language. It asks: what role does the materia... more This article is concerned with the re-channeling of language. It asks: what role does the material environment play in turning a visual language into a tactile language? To pursue that question, I examine language and infrastructure among DeafBlind people at Gallaudet University. Since 2005, aspects of the local urban landscape have been designed with the practices of Deaf people in mind. Recently, under the influence of the protactile movement, attention has turned to the tactile dimensions of design. As advisors, practitioners, and consultants contributing to these efforts, DeafBlind people seek not only to broaden the range of sensory channels linking them to their environment, but also to create environments that reinforce those connections across linguistic, sensory, and environmental domains. Drawing on the notion of "channel" as it has been applied and developed in linguistic anthropology and related fields, I argue that the re-channeling of language among DeafBlind people at Gallaudet implicates channels of transmission. It cannot, however, be reduced to an effect of their affordances. Rather, the signer's perceptions of what is possible in communication are shaped by more general perceptions of what is possible in life, and what is possible in life depends on infrastructure. [language and infrastructure, channel, affordance, protactile, Deaf-Blind]
This article examines the social and interactional foundations of sign-creation among DeafBlind p... more This article examines the social and interactional foundations of sign-creation among DeafBlind people in Seattle, Washington. Linguists studying signed languages have proposed models of sign-creation that involve the selection of an iconic gestural representation of the referent which is subjected to grammatical constraints and is thereby incorporated into the linguistic system. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork and more than 190 hours of video recordings of interaction and language use, I argue that a key interactional mechanism driving processes of sign-creation among DeafBlind people in Seattle is deictic integration. Deictic integration restricts the range of contextual values that the grammar can retrieve by coordinating systems of reference with patterns in activity. This process brings language into alignment with the world as it is perceived by the users of that language, making a range of potentially iconic relations available for selection in the creation of new signs.
This article is concerned with social and interactional processes that simplify pragmatic acts of... more This article is concerned with social and interactional processes that simplify pragmatic acts of intention attribution. The empirical focus is a series of interactions among DeafBlind people in Seattle, Washington, where pointing signs are used to individuate objects of reference in the immediate environment. Most members of this community are born deaf and slowly become blind. They come to Seattle using Visual American Sign Language, which has emerged and developed in a field organized around visual modes of access. As vision deteriorates, however, links between deictic signs (such as pointing) and the present, remembered, or imagined environment erode in idiosyncratic ways across the community of language-users, and as a result, it becomes increasingly difficult for participants to converge on objects of reference. In the past, DeafBlind people addressed this problem by relying on sighted interpreters. Under the influence of the recent "pro-tactile" movement, they have turned instead to one another to find new solutions to these referential problems. Drawing on analyses of 120 h of videorecorded interaction and language-use, detailed fieldnotes collected during 12 months of sustained anthropological fieldwork, and more than 15 years of involvement in this community in a range of capacities, I argue that DeafBlind people are generating new and reciprocal modes of access to their environment, and this process is aligning language with context in novel ways. I discuss two mechanisms that can account for this process: embedding in the social field and deictic integration. I argue that together, these social and interactional processes yield a deictic system set to retrieve a restricted range of values from the extra-linguistic context, thereby attenuating the cognitive demands of intention attribution and narrowing the gap between DeafBlind minds.
This dissertation examines the social and interactional foundations of a grammatical divergence b... more This dissertation examines the social and interactional foundations of a grammatical divergence between Tactile American Sign Language (TASL) and Visual American Sign Language (VASL) in the Seattle DeafBlind community. I argue that as a result of the pro-tactile movement, structures of interaction have been reconfigured and a new language has be- gun to emerge. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic research, more than 190 hours of videorecordings of interaction and language use, 50 interviews with members of the community, and more than 14 years of involvement in a range of capacities, I analyze this social transformation and its effect on the semiotic organization of TASL.
This article examines a divergence in the sublexical structure of Visual American Sign Language (... more This article examines a divergence in the sublexical structure of Visual American Sign Language (VASL) and Tactile American Sign Language (TASL). My central claim is that TASL is a language, not just a relay for VASL. In order to make that case, I show how changes in the structure of interaction, driven by the aims of the ''pro-tactile'' social movement, contributed to a redistribution of complexity across grammatical subsystems. I argue that these changes constitute a departure from the structure of VASL and the emergence of a new, tactile language. In doing so, I apprehend language emergence not as a ''liberation'' from context, but as a process of contextual integration.
This article is concerned with how social actors establish relations between language, the body, ... more This article is concerned with how social actors establish relations between language, the body, and the physical and social environment. The empirical focus is a series of interactions between Deaf-Blind people and tactile signed language interpreters in Seattle, Washington. Many members of the Seattle Deaf-Blind community were born deaf and, due to a genetic condition, lose their vision slowly over the course of many years. Drawing on recent work in language and practice theory, I argue that these relations are established by Deaf-Blind people through processes of INTEGRATION whereby continuity between linguistic, embodied, and social elements of a fading visual order are made continuous with corresponding elements in an emerging tactile order. In doing so, I contribute to current attempts in linguistic anthropology to model the means by which embodied, linguistic, and social phenomena crystallize in relational patterns to yield worlds that take on the appearance of concreteness and naturalness.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many DeafBlind children were left without access to educational ser... more During the COVID-19 pandemic, many DeafBlind children were left without access to educational services when schools went remote. This article presents findings from a project that brought DeafBlind adults into the homes of DeafBlind children during a historically unprecedented time, when a new language was emerging among DeafBlind people who call themselves “Protactile”. In analyzing interactions between the DeafBlind adults and children, we have gained new insights into how novel communication channels are forged intersubjectively. We focus our analysis on Jelica, a DeafBlind member of the research team and experienced Protactile educator, and her interactions with two DeafBlind children. Grounding her extensive field notes in an anthropological theory on intersubjectivity, her insights show how they gradually became attuned to each other and their environment, thereby laying the foundation for intention attribution and joint attention. Jelica does this, in part, via frequent use of “Protactile taps”, which have attention-modulating and demonstrative functions among adults. Jelica’s taps perform a “meta-channel” function to direct the child to use particular parts of their bodies for communication and exploration. This study shows how Jelica establishes an operable environment, within which the vocabulary and grammar she exposes them to will take on situated meaning. This research builds on previous work on language emergence by showing that both children and adults contribute to language emergence as they adjust to one another in the unfolding of interaction. Finally, this research calls attention to the need for DeafBlind adults to have institutional authority to shape communication practices for DeafBlind children.
The aim of this article is to contribute to anthropological understandings of intersubject- ivity... more The aim of this article is to contribute to anthropological understandings of intersubject- ivity by foregrounding the role of the environment. I begin by reviewing three key approaches that have emerged out of broader debates in the humanities and social sciences. The first mobilizes intersubjectivity as a way of explaining how a coherent social order is (re-)produced, given that the rational choice, for individuals, is to act in their own self-interest. Intersubjectivity in this view is the shared understanding that is achieved when actors adhere to normative constraints on interaction in order to fulfill an unconscious desire to be loved and accepted by others. The second approach to intersubjectivity challenges this idea, arguing that the motivations and expectations that individuals bring to interaction vary across ethnographic contexts, and for some, shared understanding is a false promise that masks the harmful intentions others are likely to have. Intersubjectivity, in this view, is organized by a desire to minimize expos- ure to others. The third approach treats intersubjectivity not as a possible outcome of interaction but as an existential condition that makes meaningful interaction possible. In this article, I put these debates in dialogue with “protactile theory,” which has grown out of a social movement in DeafBlind communities in the United States. Reading protactile theory through the lens of biosemiotics, ecological psychology, and existential phenom- enology, I argue that the medium or “the thing we’re in when we’re together” is the basis of intelligibility for all intersubjective behaviors and capacities; it can define a way of being, is ethnographically graspable, and is central to how humans interact.
Among linguists, psychologists, and anthropologists interested in multimodal communication, much ... more Among linguists, psychologists, and anthropologists interested in multimodal communication, much attention has been paid to the motor activity of the hands. Psychologists have treated the hands as a window onto the mind and as a facilitator of thought. Linguists have treated the hands as articulators of linguistic signs, and linguistic anthropologists have treated the hands as an integral part of broader, interacting semiotic processes. This essay builds on these approaches by attending to DeafBlind observations about the communicative potential of the hands. Hands are what you touch when you meet someone, and their texture, temperature, and movements remain available to you over the course of an interaction. From the hands' qualities, the rest of the person and their environment can be inferred. From this perspective, the hands appear not only as a window onto the mind, as a facilitator of thought, or as an articulator of signs, but also as a kind of appendage to the self-like cilia, left out in the world to register the dynamics of social life. This suggests new methodological possibilities for analyzing the motoric activity of hands as a sociocultural and biosemiotic problem.
Protactile DeafBlind communities in the United States gave up on politeness about a decade ago. I... more Protactile DeafBlind communities in the United States gave up on politeness about a decade ago. I was there when it happened, and the transformation took over my relationships. One key example: I had developed a habit of jumping up and intervening any time a DeafBlind person was “groping around”—touching things, bumping into walls, reaching their hands out into empty space. Groping, to me, meant that the person was lost and needed a guide. To total outsiders, groping seemed improper and in public spaces, I felt their judgements in evaluative gaze or explicit reprimand. However, my protactile friends stopped caring about those judgements and they instructed me not to act. I experienced not-acting as a state of jumpiness or nervousness—like a tick that is difficult to manage. It was years before that response was replaced by a calm curiosity about the knowledge that is acquired when one touches, rather than sees, their environment. I started watching my friends grope and I imaged what they were learning. At that point, perhaps, I became polite in a new way. Not the kind of polite that is grounded in mutual face-vulnerability and strategic manipulation, but rather in what Bergson calls “the art of finding life lovable,” wherein I am attentive to you. I notice how you move and how you think. As in a dream, I discover in myself a “light and mobile sympathy” that allows me to experience some of what you experience, but weightlessly and without effort.
Over the past several decades, linguists have accumulated evidence for "engagement systems"-a typ... more Over the past several decades, linguists have accumulated evidence for "engagement systems"-a type of grammatical system that has the special role of facilitating intersubjective engagement. Meanwhile, anthropologists and sociologists have shown the many ways that intersubjective engagement is accomplished without special linguistic resources, depending instead on interactional and social structures and capacities. This has raised a question about whether or not intersubjective grammar, as such, really matters. This article addresses that question by examining interactions between DeafBlind people at a time when new engagement systems were emerging alongside new ways of being Deaf-Blind. Building on more than a decade of research tracking the emergence of those systems, I show how they are deployed strategically for broader socio-political purposes. I conclude by proposing that for a typology of engagement systems, deep ethnographic inquiry conducted alongside linguistic description and interactional analysis will allow us to understand not only how those systems are structured, but why they matter for the people who use them.
In this article, we analyze the grammatical incorporation of demonstratives in a tactile language... more In this article, we analyze the grammatical incorporation of demonstratives in a tactile language, emerging in communities of DeafBlind signers in the US who communicate via reciprocal, tactile channels-a practice known as "protactile." In the first part of the paper, we report on a synchronic analysis of recent data, identifying four types of "taps," which have taken on different functions in protacitle language and communication. In the second part of the paper, we report on a diachronic analysis of data collected over the past 8 years. This analysis reveals the emergence of a new kind of "propriotactic" tap, which has been co-opted by the emerging phonological system of protactile language. We link the emergence of this unit to both demonstrative taps, and backchanneling taps, both of which emerged earlier. We show how these forms are all undergirded by an attention-modulation function, more or less backgrounded, and operating across different semiotic systems. In doing so, we contribute not only to what is known about demonstratives in tactile languages, but also to what is known about the role of demonstratives in the emergence of new languages.
In this paper, a novel wearable haptic device, to be worn on the hand and forearm, is introduced.... more In this paper, a novel wearable haptic device, to be worn on the hand and forearm, is introduced. Using the modalities of vibration, pressure, and heat application, the device attempts to replicate four core components of communication. The four components-co-presence, phatic communication, back-channeling, and direction giving-are simulated through haptic profiles individually unique to a section or combined as an encompassing system of the device. This paper evaluates the performance of the device through three testing phases with sighted-hearing and DeafBlind individuals. Results indicate that a strong majority of the tested haptic profiles show statistical significance in replication between individuals. This work is unique in its collaboration with the protactile DeafBlind community, individuals who communicate solely through touch, by furthering understanding on how to generate intuitive tactile profiles in wearable haptic devices.
A new phonological system is becoming conventional across a group of DeafBlind signers in the Uni... more A new phonological system is becoming conventional across a group of DeafBlind signers in the United States who communicate via reciprocal, tactile channels-a practice known as 'Protactile'. The recent conventionalization of protactile phonology is analyzed in this article. Research on emergent visual signed languages has demonstrated that conventionalization is not a single monolithic process, but a complex of principles involving patterns of distribution-discreteness, stability, and productivity of form-as form becomes linked with meaning in increasingly stable ways. Conventionalization of protactile phonology involves assigning specific grammatical roles to the four hands (and arms) of signer 1 ('conveyer') and signer 2 ('receiver') in 'proprioceptive constructions' (PCs)-comparable to 'classifier constructions' in visual signed languages. Analyzing PCs offers new insights into how the conventionalization of a phonological system can play out in the tactile modality.*
This article is concerned with the re-channeling of language. It asks: what role does the materia... more This article is concerned with the re-channeling of language. It asks: what role does the material environment play in turning a visual language into a tactile language? To pursue that question, I examine language and infrastructure among DeafBlind people at Gallaudet University. Since 2005, aspects of the local urban landscape have been designed with the practices of Deaf people in mind. Recently, under the influence of the protactile movement, attention has turned to the tactile dimensions of design. As advisors, practitioners, and consultants contributing to these efforts, DeafBlind people seek not only to broaden the range of sensory channels linking them to their environment, but also to create environments that reinforce those connections across linguistic, sensory, and environmental domains. Drawing on the notion of "channel" as it has been applied and developed in linguistic anthropology and related fields, I argue that the re-channeling of language among DeafBlind people at Gallaudet implicates channels of transmission. It cannot, however, be reduced to an effect of their affordances. Rather, the signer's perceptions of what is possible in communication are shaped by more general perceptions of what is possible in life, and what is possible in life depends on infrastructure. [language and infrastructure, channel, affordance, protactile, Deaf-Blind]
This article examines the social and interactional foundations of sign-creation among DeafBlind p... more This article examines the social and interactional foundations of sign-creation among DeafBlind people in Seattle, Washington. Linguists studying signed languages have proposed models of sign-creation that involve the selection of an iconic gestural representation of the referent which is subjected to grammatical constraints and is thereby incorporated into the linguistic system. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork and more than 190 hours of video recordings of interaction and language use, I argue that a key interactional mechanism driving processes of sign-creation among DeafBlind people in Seattle is deictic integration. Deictic integration restricts the range of contextual values that the grammar can retrieve by coordinating systems of reference with patterns in activity. This process brings language into alignment with the world as it is perceived by the users of that language, making a range of potentially iconic relations available for selection in the creation of new signs.
This article is concerned with social and interactional processes that simplify pragmatic acts of... more This article is concerned with social and interactional processes that simplify pragmatic acts of intention attribution. The empirical focus is a series of interactions among DeafBlind people in Seattle, Washington, where pointing signs are used to individuate objects of reference in the immediate environment. Most members of this community are born deaf and slowly become blind. They come to Seattle using Visual American Sign Language, which has emerged and developed in a field organized around visual modes of access. As vision deteriorates, however, links between deictic signs (such as pointing) and the present, remembered, or imagined environment erode in idiosyncratic ways across the community of language-users, and as a result, it becomes increasingly difficult for participants to converge on objects of reference. In the past, DeafBlind people addressed this problem by relying on sighted interpreters. Under the influence of the recent "pro-tactile" movement, they have turned instead to one another to find new solutions to these referential problems. Drawing on analyses of 120 h of videorecorded interaction and language-use, detailed fieldnotes collected during 12 months of sustained anthropological fieldwork, and more than 15 years of involvement in this community in a range of capacities, I argue that DeafBlind people are generating new and reciprocal modes of access to their environment, and this process is aligning language with context in novel ways. I discuss two mechanisms that can account for this process: embedding in the social field and deictic integration. I argue that together, these social and interactional processes yield a deictic system set to retrieve a restricted range of values from the extra-linguistic context, thereby attenuating the cognitive demands of intention attribution and narrowing the gap between DeafBlind minds.
This dissertation examines the social and interactional foundations of a grammatical divergence b... more This dissertation examines the social and interactional foundations of a grammatical divergence between Tactile American Sign Language (TASL) and Visual American Sign Language (VASL) in the Seattle DeafBlind community. I argue that as a result of the pro-tactile movement, structures of interaction have been reconfigured and a new language has be- gun to emerge. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic research, more than 190 hours of videorecordings of interaction and language use, 50 interviews with members of the community, and more than 14 years of involvement in a range of capacities, I analyze this social transformation and its effect on the semiotic organization of TASL.
This article examines a divergence in the sublexical structure of Visual American Sign Language (... more This article examines a divergence in the sublexical structure of Visual American Sign Language (VASL) and Tactile American Sign Language (TASL). My central claim is that TASL is a language, not just a relay for VASL. In order to make that case, I show how changes in the structure of interaction, driven by the aims of the ''pro-tactile'' social movement, contributed to a redistribution of complexity across grammatical subsystems. I argue that these changes constitute a departure from the structure of VASL and the emergence of a new, tactile language. In doing so, I apprehend language emergence not as a ''liberation'' from context, but as a process of contextual integration.
This article is concerned with how social actors establish relations between language, the body, ... more This article is concerned with how social actors establish relations between language, the body, and the physical and social environment. The empirical focus is a series of interactions between Deaf-Blind people and tactile signed language interpreters in Seattle, Washington. Many members of the Seattle Deaf-Blind community were born deaf and, due to a genetic condition, lose their vision slowly over the course of many years. Drawing on recent work in language and practice theory, I argue that these relations are established by Deaf-Blind people through processes of INTEGRATION whereby continuity between linguistic, embodied, and social elements of a fading visual order are made continuous with corresponding elements in an emerging tactile order. In doing so, I contribute to current attempts in linguistic anthropology to model the means by which embodied, linguistic, and social phenomena crystallize in relational patterns to yield worlds that take on the appearance of concreteness and naturalness.
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Papers by Terra Edwards
Posters by Terra Edwards