Signing songs and the openings of semiotic repertoires

Abstract

This paper presents an interpretative interview study that explores a song signer’s motivations and language ideologies as they emerge in translanguaging between languages and modalities. In signing songs, the limitations and proficiencies of deaf artists’ and audience members’ particular linguistic and semiotic repertoires come to the fore. The artist mediates between the affordances of the asymmetrically shared visual and auditory channels, as well as across music, song lyrics, and sign language. In so doing, they produce a distinctive text whose appreciation may expose the partial and asymmetric repertoires of audience members, as well as the limitations of the text itself in crossing borders. These limitations and asymmetries render song signing an ethical event because the ethical possibilities of communication emerge in its fallibility.