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This article explores the role of the mouth in creative sign language with a particular focus on its onomatopoeic use. The onomatopoeic mouth gestures evoke a vivid sensory image associated with the referent (sound, vision, touch) through modifying the aperture or the shape of the mouth and different ways of releasing the air from the mouth. Based on the close reading of three poems from different sign languages (South African Sign Language, British Sign Language, and American Sign Language), three subtypes of onomatopoeic mouth gestures are explored: iconic, synesthesic, and metaphorical. In all three subtypes, onomatopoeia is seen as the reinterpretation of sensory images by deaf visual artists. Its imagistic nature makes it highly relevant to creative sign language.
Art appeals to our senses, more or less directly, by presenting a concrete image-visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory. Such images trigger emotional responses among the appreciators of art. Linguistic art is not an exception. Linguistic expressions utilize two channels of representing meaning: the syntactic dimension offering propositional contents and the imagistic dimension allowing direct contact with sensory, motor, and affective information (Kita 1997). Together they create a rich, multilayered meaning in language.
This article explores how deaf poets, who use sign language as a medium of artistic expression, create vivid sensory images in order to enhance the imagistic dimension of their work. In particular, it focuses on the onomatopoeic use of mouth gestures.
Onomatopoeic mouth gestures evoke a vivid sensory image associated with the referent (sound, vision, touch, sensations). Their primary function is to add an imagistic layer of meaning to a poetic discourse. This may be done through making use of different visual appearances (such as open or closed mouth, tense or relaxed muscles, puffed cheeks or sucked-in cheeks, round or pursed lips, and so on) and different ways of releasing the air from the mouth (smooth and continuous release of air, as opposed to rough and abrupt bursts of air from the mouth). Such mouth gestures may not carry a propositional meaning, but they add rich sensory images to a poetic description.
Interestingly, even sounds, to which most deaf people have no or limited access, are represented by mouth gestures. They are not the direct representation of auditory input, but rather...