Un linguaggio in azione: alcune riflessioni sull’uso dell’iconicità action-based nelle lingue dei Segni.

Abstract

Starting from some issues of the current debate directed to understanding the so-called action-based iconicity, I will focus on the modalities by which the latter is used by signers in order to represent both actions and objects, i.e. when the Core Nouns of their lexicon are articulated through the use of Handling Handshapes. This analysis will show to what extent Sign language users re-enact the practices related to the items they are talking about, representing reality through the habits with which they interact with it. This fundamental notion, which belongs to Peircean Pragmatism, is at the very center of the idea that there is a fundamental link between the ways we act on reality and the ways we confer meaning to it, which has been also emphasized by contemporary research on mind. From these assumptions, I will illustrate that this philosophical framework could be useful not only to look at iconicity in Sign languages, but also to show that these semiotic systems use the same relational dimension highlighted by situated approaches to cognition and language