La metafora nella Lingua dei Segni
The Metaphor in Sign Language

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with a characteristic of sign language and especially of Italian Sign Language (ISL): metaphoricity and the consequent semantic indeterminacy that a sign can have. The oscillation of the meaning of a word in the oral language gives rise to the metaphorical phenomenon. The same is true of Italian sign language which, influenced by the culture of oral language, takes and makes its own everyday metaphors; an example is the expression “parlare a macchinetta” metaphorized in ISL as “segnare motore”, where the four formative parameters and the contributing facial expressions are combined to represent the metaphor. These extensions of meaning are a physiological fact of life of a language used daily and serve for greater expressiveness. The metaphor is, therefore, a mechanism that structures the linguistic activity, both for vocal languages and sign languages.

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