Sociolinguistic Variation in Mouthings in British Sign Language: A Corpus-Based Study.

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Sign Language Studies

Background:

• Mouth activity, including mouthings (from spoken language) and mouth gestures, is integral to sign languages.
• Mouthings in sign languages are theorized as code-blending, akin to code-switching in spoken languages.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between mouthings co-occurring with verb signs in British Sign Language (BSL) and linguistic/social factors.
• To analyze variations in mouthing patterns within the BSL Corpus.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the British Sign Language (BSL) Corpus to examine mouthing distribution with verb signs.
• Analyzed data considering factors such as participant region, gender, age, and language background.

Main Results:

• Observed significant variation in mouthing across participants and signs, supporting the code-blending theory.
• Found a strong association between plain verbs and increased mouthing.
• Identified significant effects of region (South UK > North UK), gender (women > men), and age (younger signers < older signers) on mouthing frequency.

Conclusions:

• Mouthings in BSL are a form of code-blending, influenced by social and linguistic factors, not a compulsory sign feature.
• The multimodal, multilingual nature of sign language code-blending supports the concept of translanguaging.
• Highlights the need to consider modality, linguistic codes, and simultaneous patterning in translanguaging research.