Complementary indexicalities: gaze, pointing, and conversational scaffolding in an emerging sign language

PROFESSOR JOHN B. HAVILAND
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO

In this workshop presentation, I will introduce “Z” (Zinacantec Family Homesign), an emerging first generation sign language from a Tzotzil (Mayan) speaking community in Chiapas, Mexico, and the ways I have tried to study it over the past seven years or so. I will concentrate on the structure of attention in Z conversation and the foundational importance of two general formal devices for managing mutual attention: pointing and gaze. Adapting somewhat Du Bois’ aphorism (1985) that “grammars code best what speaker do most” I will sketch very briefly some of my own previous work on the grammaticalization of attention in Z, turning, as time permits, to evidence in the signing and socialization of the first (and perhaps only) second generation signer of standards of well-formedness and the formal regimentation of mutual attention as central to the emergence of this new language.

FRIDAY, JUNE 5TH, 2015

SOCIAL SCIENCES 122, 1:30pm