Grounding through the lens of backchannels in signed conversation: Cross-linguistic insights

1 in 1000 deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals in the EU communicates in one of 31 national or regional signed languages (SLs) as their first language.

Understanding how deaf signers of different SLs coordinate their interaction to build and maintain mutual understanding, known as grounding, is thus a key issue in unveiling the highly cooperative nature of human communication. However, research on the interactional infrastructure of SLs is still understudied.

Combining insights from comparative linguistics, computational and conversational analysis, SignBack describes how deaf signers from two unrelated SLs, namely, Norwegian SL (NTS) and French Belgian SL (LSFB) achieve mutual understanding in conversation.

To achieve this, I will analyse one core mechanism recognised for providing positive evidence of understanding in interaction, namely backchannels.

This project will be the first cross-linguistic study to adopt a synchronic, corpus-based approach to SLs by combining quantitative statistical processing with a qualitative, interactional view on language to achieve a better understanding of human interaction in context.

The integration of these methods across SLs will provide key insights into the interactional practices of two linguistic minorities, thereby further contributing to a more dynamic and semiotically diverse view of language.

SignBack will make a major contribution to the field of (SL) linguistics by further documenting two under described SLs.

It will provide vital implications to a range of domains including (i) curriculum design for SL interpreters, (ii) effective development of SL-based human-computer interaction and (iii) baselines for clinical research investigating impaired social functioning.

The innovation of this project therefore lies not only in its object of study, which includes an overlooked side of linguistics but also in its cross-linguistic scope by being more socially inclusive towards two endangered linguistic minorities.