A multimodal analysis of customer interactions between deaf(blind) and hearing people in Mumbai

Part of the Sadler Seminar Series ‘Signs beyond borders: Meaning-making across sign and spoken languages’.

The data that will be shared during this session focuses on fluent deaf and deafblind signers and hearing non-signers in Mumbai who use gestures to communicate with each other, often combined with mouthing, speaking and/or writing in different languages.

The data were gathered through linguistic ethnography in markets, shops, food joints and public transport in Mumbai.

Within gesture-based interactions, people with sensorial asymmetries (i.e. deaf vs. hearing) combined the visual-gestural modality and certain features of the auditory-oral modality, and/or switched between modalities. A deafblind participant made use of visible and tactile gesturing including pointing at and tapping on objects (to indicate them), using emblematic gestures, and tracing the shape of objects on the hand. Interlocutors orient towards the ongoing interaction and negotiate the constraints and possibilities imposed not only by different modalities but also by different sensorial access to these modalities.

Presented by Dr Annelies Kusters (Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh).

Further information 
For further information about the series please contact Jessica Bradley

Location details

LHRI - Seminar Room 1