Rethinking ' Verbal ' and ' Non - Verbal ' in Discursive Performance •

It is widely assumed that sign languages are secondary semiotic phenomena that only come into being when deafness prevents the normal acquisition of a spoken language. That this is not always the case is well illustrated by the sign languages used by contemporary indigenous Australian groups (Kendon 1989), and the sign language shared by indigenous peoples of the Plains region of North America (Farnell1995a; Taylor 1996). These peoples use sign languages in addition to conventional spoken languages, not instead of them. They therefore offer an interesting challenge to definitions of language as traditionally constituted in Western thought, whereby only certain aspects of spoken language practices have counted as 'truly' linguistic (Tedlock 1983).