Beyond Sign and Reference: A corpus-analytic study on the interactional use of pointing and non-manual actions in French Belgian Sign Language
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2025-10-23
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en
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This study examines interactional functions of index finger pointing actions in LSFB conversations, specifically exploring turn-final and backchannel occurrences alongside their non-manual actions. Previous literature has revealed that only about 8% of all pointing actions serve an interactional purpose (Lepeut, 2020; Ferrara, 2020), this thesis aims to confirm this finding and contribute to the increasing research regarding signed language conversations from a social and interactional perspective.
Eight video recordings from the LSFB Corpus (Meurant, 2015) were analysed using ELAN for video annotation, combined with quantitative and qualitative analysis. The findings indicate that 6.8% of pointing actions served interactional functions, which confirms previous research. Analysis revealed that backchanneling pointing actions are primarily used for agreement and understanding, while turn-final pointing actions manage floor transitions. Importantly, these interactional meanings emerge through the combination of manual pointing with non-manual actions. This study contributes to the understanding of interactional pointing as part of the resources available to signed language users.
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