Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Resemblance-Oriented Communication Strategies: Understanding The Role Of Resemblance In Signed And Spoken Languages, Daniel R. Eberle

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is to propose that resemblance plays an important role in human communication. Saussure proposed a characteristic principle of the linguistic sign: that connections between linguistic codes and the objects they signify are arbitrary; however, I intend to show that resemblance, which I define as the visual or aural similarity between a stimulus, the thought it is intended to activate, and the real world target that utterance is about, is an important part of human communication and should be taken into consideration when defining language and proposing theories of human communication.

I have chosen Relevance Theory …

Classifier Constructions As Procedural Signs In American Sign Language, Stephen Perry Jones Ii

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I will be analyzing what has typically, in sign language literature, been termed classifiers and classifier constructions. I will be approaching them from the pragmatic perspective by applying Relevance Theory to explain their usage as representations that manipulate and modify their referents. The data comes from texts signed by native users of American Sign Language and are from academic lectures, interviews, narrative, and course curriculum. I have found that Relevance Theory adequately describes why and when classifiers constructions are used and that they function as a procedural referring expression.