Attitude ascriptions in sign languages and role shift
Temas
Detalles
Sign languages have been shown to share a strategy to mark reports and quotes known as role shift or role taking. The label refers to the fact that the report looks on the surface as if the signer takes on the role of the reported person, as a kind of enactment of the speech event. Role shift is often presented as some sort of direct quotation that is systematically accompanied by imitation of the actions by the reported agent, in a mimic-like way. In this paper I discuss several properties of role shift that undermine such a simple view. Research on this phenomenon in specific sign languages such as Catalan Sign Language (LSC) shows that more fine-grained distinctions must be identified in the domain of role shift, as it is used in a broader domain of structures than direct quotation. It will be argued, on the one hand, that different kinds of role shift complements must be distinguished in LSC, and on the other, that role shift is not restricted to speech reports but it serves a more general function of marking attitude ascriptions overtly.
En: Proceedings from the 13th meeting of the Texas Linguistics Society (2012).