Exploring British Sign Language Via Systemic Functional Linguistics

"One of many natural sign languages in use around the world, through the simultaneous use of embodied articulators British Sign Language (BSL) operates as a fully-fledged semiotic system in the visual-spatial modality. Filling a gap in current research in the field of sign language linguistic, this book investigates visual-spatial communications from a functional perspective. Presenting a description and analysis of BSL from the perspective of Hallidayean Systemic Functional Linguistics, Luke Rudge explores how BSL users make meaning from three different yet interrelated perspectives: How exchanges of information are managed at a social level (the interpersonal metafunction); How experience is encoded in the language (the experiential metafunction); How communications are organised into coherent parts and wholes (the textual metafunction). Examining these perspectives both separately and in unison, Exploring British Sign Language via Systemic Functional Linguistics places them within the context of current observations in sign linguistics, providing a complementary viewpoint on how visual-spatial communications may be understood as social semiosis."--