Making Sense: Language, Ethics, and Understanding in Deaf NepalA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Making Sense explores the experiential, ethical, and intellectual stakes of living in, and thinking with, worlds wherein language cannot be taken for granted. In Nepal, many deaf signers use Nepali Sign Language (NSL), a young, conventional signed language. The majority of deaf Nepalis, however, use what NSL signers call natural sign. Natural sign involves conventional and improvisatory signs, many of which recruit semiotic relations immanent in the social and material world. These features make conversation in natural sign both possible and precarious. Sense-making in natural sign depends on signers' skillful use of resources and on addressees' willingness to engage. Natural sign reveals the labor of sense-making that in more conventional language is carried by shared grammar. Ultimately, this highly original book shows that emergent language is an ethical endeavor, challenging readers to consider what it means, and what it takes, to understand and to be understood. |
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actions Adamorobe addressees American Sign Language Anthropology argues articulation asked Binita chapter communicative practices context conventional language conventional signed conventionality conversation deaf and hearing deaf community deaf Nepalis deaf NSL signers deaf people's deaf person deaf signers deaf society Deaf Studies DeafBlind disabled discussed Donna Jo Napoli downhill edited emergent Erin Moriarty ethical example experiences eye gaze Fieldnotes Fieldnotes June fieldwork fingerspelled Friedner Gallaudet University Graif GRAIN-ALCOHOL HIT-self Hoffmann-Dilloway home sign immanent interactions interlocutors interpret Ishara Jyoti Kathmandu Krishna Kusters lāṭo Limbu linguistic Mara Maunabudhuk and Bodhe natural sign NDFN neighbor Nepali Nepali Sign Language not-understanding NSL class NSL sign oldest orientations Padma participants Parvati Point-self pragmatic Prajwal refer relationship Sagar Samman Sanu Kumari Sarawata semiotic sense shared sign Shrila sign DEAF Sign Language Studies signing communities someone speech spoken Nepali Surya Kumari talk tion understand understood University Press utterances village word Zeshan