| As a method of coming to a theoretical understanding of the culture of deaf signers, I present a comprehensive formal analysis of the deaf narrative genres that have emerged over the course of sign language's historical suppression. Analysis is based on over 700 narratives and related representational forms, appearing on stage, in print, in casual conversations, and elsewhere. A principal finding is that an integrated treatment of deaf narrative is possible, where each genre's definition bears upon that of the others. By privileging linguistic anthropology's social-interactional definition of text, two performance genres are revealed as structural opposites, defining extreme poles of deaf protagonistship, the politically voiceless and the politically voiced. In tandem with these, more than ten narrative genres are treated in the dissertation, most of them discovered by the analysis itself. The contrastive principles necessary for their integration are posited as deaf cultural categories, categories defining a "conversionary worldview." The genres define an immanent theory of subalterity and the possibility of expression: that subalterity is produced through value, and that subaltern voice can be achieved only if the format parameters of value's production are transformed. In terms of this immanent theory, it is notable that the basic combinatoric principles celebrated by signers as definitional of their language are in no way accommodated by received conceptions of language form. In the dissertation's second chapter, I show how these combinatoric principles richly define sign language storytelling, and how, to the degree they have been addressed in mainstream linguistics, their formal-communicative character has been systematically subverted. Linguistic anthropology's commitment to a functional conception of language is on trial. If language is to be understood functionally, then the formal principles allowing sign language to translate all other languages must be regarded as linguistic, and, thus, linguistic theory must change. As a whole, the dissertation foregrounds the problematic relation of the deaf to received scientific and humanistic discourse. In terms of this, I highlight how the evolution of contemporary anthropological thought toward critical assessments of culture functions now, ironically, to mask or even subvert the culturally-critical function of these traditional forms. |
