Introducing Sign Language Literature Folklore and Creativity

This is an accessible and comprehensive sign language textbook with an international frame of reference, designed for students and teachers in the global Deaf community. Based on years of experience teaching sign language and deaf studies at undergraduate, postgraduate and community levels, it grants readers access to a vibrant creative heritage.

Rachel Sutton-Spence is a lecturer in Sign Language Studies at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil. She has long been fascinated by sign language poetry and folklore, and has published extensively on linguistic and educational aspects of sign language creativity, humour and metaphor. She is co-author, with Bencie Woll, of The Linguistics of British Sign Language: An Introduction (1999). She taught sign language linguistics and literature at the University of Bristol and to professionals working with sign language within the British Deaf community for many years.
 

Michiko Kaneko is a Lecturer and Head of the Department of South African Sign Language in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She obtained her PhD in Deaf Studies in the University of Bristol, where she also completed a three-year postdoctoral project titled "Metaphor in Creative Sign Language". Her research interests include sign language linguistics, sign language literature (poetry and stories expressed visually, spatially and manually) and metaphor studies.

1. What is Sign Language Literature?2. Sign Language Literature in Context

3. Oral Literature and Performance

4. Folklore and Deaflore

5. Story Types

6. Storytelling Techniques

7. Anthropomorphism

8. Beginnings and Endings

9. Plots, Protagonists, Subjects and Themes

10. Metaphor

11. Prose and Poetry

12. Neologism and Ambiguity

13. Repetition

14. Handshape

15. Use of Signing Space

16. Symmetry and Balance

17. Nonmanual Features

18. Deaf Humour and Sign Language Humour

19. Style in Signed Art Forms

20. Conclusion