This book is about three West African sign languages with different time-depths, community sizes and patterns of social interactions. Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL), Ghana, is an old village sign... Show moreThis book is about three West African sign languages with different time-depths, community sizes and patterns of social interactions. Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL), Ghana, is an old village sign language used by 33 deaf people. Langue des Signes de Bouakako (LaSiBo), Côte d'Ivoire, is a new village sign language, used by six deaf people. Língua Gestual Guineense, Guinea-Bissau, is an emerging school-based sign language used by around 500 deaf people.In the three sign languages, 45 narratives of personal experiences were analysed to better understand how the time depth, the community size and the socialisation frequency influenced the three sign languages. Four different descriptive analyses of the narratives were carried out. Study 1 analysed the structure of the narratives, following Labov & Waletzky's model (1967) and Freytag's dramatic pyramid (1894). Studies 2, 3 and 4 focus on specific narrative devices that work to make narratives more convincing, as part of Labov's (1972) "evaluation" component. These devices refer to the moments when storytellers give dramatic prominence to narratives through the incorporation of characters, such as the use of different signing perspectives (Study 2), the use of role shifting between characters and constructed dialogues (Study 3) and the use of different types of descriptions of the animal (Study 4).These studies show that AdaSL and male LGG signers use devices that reflect a greater ability to capture the audience's attention, while LaSiBo and female LGG signers tend to show similar patterns in using simpler or reduced devices.This study shows that the frequency of social interaction between deaf peers is the most crucial factor in language change over time. Show less
This thesis offers a description of the Bouakako Sign Language (LaSiBo, Langues des Signes de Bouakako in French), that has emerged within a community comprising a majority of hearing members.... Show moreThis thesis offers a description of the Bouakako Sign Language (LaSiBo, Langues des Signes de Bouakako in French), that has emerged within a community comprising a majority of hearing members. LaSiBo is a young language that has developed within a group of hearing-impaired community members to fulfill their communication needs, but is also used by other members of the village. The aspects studied here are firstly the formal properties of LaSiBo and inter-personal variation in sign usage; as well as semantic domains such as kinship, colors and time. The size of the community, the age of the language, the influence of the spoken language and the absence of use in education are among the factors that influence the formation of LaSiBo. The comparisons carried out in this work highlight similarities and differences not only between sign languages (used in small communities in particular) – which, however different they may be, share the same modality (visio-gestural) –, but also between languages that are in contact with each other (the Dida language and LaSiBo) but use different modality (respectively audio-oral and visio-gestural). Show less
