Language Research

Politeness in Iranian Sign Language: Analysis of Non-Manual Features

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Behzad Rahbar 1
Masoumeh Khoshandam Mallati 2

1 Assistant Professor Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran

2 MA in Linguistics, Faculty of Persian literature and foreign languages, Allameh Tabataba'i university, Tehran, Iran.

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2024.365113.666856
Abstract
 
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 The purpose of the present study was to investigate non-manual features (NMF) that convey politeness in Iranian sign language. The data was collected through interviews with 18 deaf people (including nine men, and nine women), and six hard-of-hearing women from Tehran, Zanjan, and Anzali. All the participants used the Iranian sign language and were of different ages and educational levels. The questions of this research are in the field of three speech acts requesting, rejecting, and apologizing. Non-manual features are a complex aspect of all sign languages and perform a range of grammatical and paralinguistic functions, and the second is highlighted in this study. For linguistic analysis, sign orders and the type of words were used first, and then the use of non-manual features with each sign was checked. According to the findings of this research, to convey politeness / impoliteness through Iranian sign language, it is not enough to use signs, and NMF complements the meaning. Non-manual features include movement of the body, head, eyes and eyebrows, lips, chin and nose. The data from this study shows that the movements of the body, head, eyebrow, eyes, and mouth gestures are crucial in every three speech acts. Results show that Squint is the most used NMF across requests, Side tilt is the most used NMF across rejections and polite pucker has the highest frequency of NMFs in apologies in the Iranian Sign Language. The type and extent of use of these NMFs are context-dependent. Distribution of these NMFs depends on context: formal or informal and the variety of functions. This research proved that non-manual features act as the equivalent of prosodic in the Iranian Sign language. The results of this research can help sociologists understand the culture of the deaf community, sign language researchers understand linguistic factors, and translators provide fluent translation

Keywords

Politeness
Linguistic politeness
Sociolinguistic
Sign Language
Iranian Sign Language
non-manual Features
Prosody
Subjects

 
 
 
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  • Receive Date 10 September 2023
  • Revise Date 24 August 2024
  • Accept Date 16 June 2024

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