Discourse genres in French Sign Language

Abstract This paper presents an analysis of four discourse genres in French Sign Language (LSF): narrative, explanatory, argumentative and dialogical. We examine the association between the frequency and type of linguistic categories with regard to the discourse genres considered. The linguistic categories used are based on the Semiological Approach ( Cuxac 2000 ), which suggests the existence of two main types of units: units stemming from an illustrative intent, grouped under the name ‘Transfer Units’, in contrast with units without any illustrative intent, i.e., Lexical Units, Pointing Units, and Fingerspelling Units. The data for this study were taken from two corpora and annotations were performed using the ELAN software. A range of descriptive statistics were used to complement the overall qualitative view of the data. One of the main outcomes of the quantitative approach is the identification, through Principal Component Analysis and Specificity Analysis, of an association between the two main types of units and different discourse genres. These findings deepen our understanding of genre-based variation in sign language, and hold potential for practical applications in areas such as bilingual education and automatic sign language processing.