The Pragmatics of Gaze Patterns in a Local Family Sign Language from Guatemala

Abstract

In this study, we document the coordination of eye gaze and manual signing in a local sign language from Nebaj, Guatemala. We analyze gaze patterns in two conversations in which signers described the book Frog Where Are You to an interlocutor. The signers include a deaf child who narrated the book to a hearing interlocutor and her grandfather, who is also deaf, as he described the same book to his hearing grandson during a separate conversation. We code the two narratives for gaze target and sign type, analyzing the relationship between eye gaze and sign type as well as describing patterns in the sequencing of eye gaze targets. Both signers show a strong correlation between sign type and the direction of their eye gaze. As in previous literature, signers looked to a specialized medial space while producing signs that enact the action of characters in discourse in contrast to eye gaze patterns for non-enacting signs. Our analysis highlights both pragmatic–interactional and discursive–narrative functions of gaze. The pragmatic–interactional use of gaze primarily relates to the management of visual attention and turn-taking, while the discursive–narrative use of gaze marks the distinction between narrator and character perspective within stretches of narration.