A Grammar of German Sign Language (DGS)

Action role shift is a channel specific device to report the actions of another person. Unlike attitude role shift, action role shift does not only involve linguistic material but draws on gestural elements. These gestures are used to imitate the actions another person performed in a different context. This is illustrated by the following examples from the fable ‘The shepherd’s boy and the wolf’. In the examples below, gestural elements are glossed in italics.

Example of action role-shift from the role of the boy 

                                          rs:3a                                                                   rs:3a

a.       boy stand-hold-a-stick take-care stand-hold-a-stick-looking-around 

‘The (shepherd’s) boy stood there with a stick in his hand, herded (the sheep) and looked around.’

 

                                                                                                                                                                     rs:3a

b.      nice everywhere ix_a but boring ix_a same ++ stand-hold-a-stick-looking-around-nored-and-irritated

‘It was nice everywhere, but very boring and always the same, like standing with a stick in one’s hand, looking around bored.’

(Herrmann & Steinbach 2012: 209; Herrmann & Pendzich 2018: 282)

In the example above, the signer is gesturally imitating the (bored) behavior of the shepherd’s boy while he is watching the sheep. As opposed to attitude role shift, the non-manuals do not involve any marking of an addressee. Therefore, non-manuals related to the R-locus of the addressee are not used. Likewise, action role shift is not accompanied by a matrix clause containing a speech act verb. Another difference concerns the material in the scope of role. In attitude role shift, gestural components are restricted to facial expressions imitating the quoted signer. By contrast, in action role shift, a signer may use non-linguistic manual and non-manual components to demonstrate a broad range action performed by another person (in our example the shepherd’s boy). These gestural elements are, however, restricted to the signing space, that is, only gestures that are performed by the same (manual and non-manual) articulatory system used for signing can be integrated in action role shift. As a consequence, the gestural components are adapted to the linguistic components which yields a smooth transition between signing and gesturing. In addition, in action role shift gestural and linguistic elements are used together to realize a complex proposition. The action role shift illustrated above contains linguistic (small caps) and gestural (italics) elements. Because of the modality-specific properties of the articulatory system, linguistic and gestural elements can be used simultaneously in role shift. 

Action role shift is frequently used in signed narration, where it has at least two important functions. On the one hand, action role shift makes narration livelier by imitating the behavior of the character(s). On the other hand, it can be used to shift perspective. In the example above, the narrator shifts into the perspective of the shepherd’s boy. Thereby, the audience is more involved in the story told by the narrator as opposed to a story told from the neutral point of view of the narrator, i.e. narrator’s perspective. Action role shift even offers the possibility to mix perspectives. This is illustrated by the following example, which shows a subsequent part of the same fable ‘The shepherd’s boy and the wolf’ signed by another signer.    

(recreated from Herrmann & Pendzich 2018: 299)

In the left picture, the narrator is gesturally imitating the neighbors running to the boy, that is, the narrator adopts the perspective of a group of characters. The right picture shows a shift in perspective. Here, the signer linguistically expresses the movement of the neighbors with the classifier handshape for a group of moving people (i.e. a 5-hand). The hands move towards the body of the signer, which represents the boy. At the same time, the face continues to imitate the neighbors. Hence, different parts of the body are used to express different perspectives leading to a highly complex mix of perspectives typical for action role shift in sign language narration.