July, 4th -5th 2024
Hamburg, Germany
Expressing Emotions in Sign Languages

by Annika Herrmann & Sarah Schwarzenberg (Universität Hamburg) and Thomas Finkbeiner & Nina-Kristin Meister & Markus Steinbach (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)

Scope of the Workshop (Video in International Sign)

Scope of the Workshop
The expression of emotions in languages turns out to be particularly interesting when looking at sign languages across the world since sign languages are more expressive and iconic than spoken languages. Not surprisingly, affective, emotional, and expressive aspects of sign languages have gained a lot of interest in the past years, particularly pushing forward the debates about the linguistic status of different kinds of manual and nonmanual emotional expressions in sign languages at the gesture-sign continuum. Investigating emotional expressions in the visual-spatial modality thus provides new empirical and theoretical insights in the linguistic and cognitive analysis of emotional expressions at all levels of grammar and communication.
In this workshop, we aim at bringing together research on the expression of emotions in sign languages from different perspectives and disciplines. Investigating the expression of emotions in the visual-spatial modality covers not only a wide range of linguistic areas (e.g., parts of speech, facial expressions, demonstrations, iconicity, irony), but also a variety of communicative situations (e.g., conversations, monologues, settings with feedback strategies, settings with conflicts, sign language interpreting).

Funded by DFG Priority Programme 2392  - ViCom Workshop 2024