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On the role of eye gaze in Flemish Sign Language: A multifocal eye-tracking study on the phenomena of online turn processing and depicting

Book - Dissertation

This dissertation provides a first systematic account into the role of eye gaze in Flemish Sign Language discourse. Using a multifocal eye-trakcking approach, I investigated 1) unaddressed participants' gaze behavior and 2) the role of eye gaze in the coordination of depictions. In the first study, I used eye gaze as an empirical measure of anticipation processes. I have thereby shown that the tight temporal coordination of interaction is also reflected in unaddressed participants in question-response sequences. The second part of the dissertation involves an analysis on the construal of depictions and the role of eye gaze therein. I explored depicting as a method of communication and accounted for the variety of semiotic resources signers draw on when creating depictions rather than only looking at prototypical forms of depictions, i.e., classifier constructions and enactment. Continuing on that line, I highlight that signers show similar gaze behavior across different types of depictive tokens and thus argue that eye gaze is not related to particular sign types, i.e., particular forms, but rather to the method of depicting. Moreover, I also shed light on a dynamic interplay between different functions of eye gaze in turn management. In this way, this dissertation underlines the idea that signed languages are heterogeneous systems in which signers convey meaning by a range of different semiotic resources that differ in degree of conventionalization. Furthermore, I show that signers' gaze behavior differs according to the action(s) they are performing and I highlight striking similarities with findings reported on in studies on spoken languages. In this way, this dissertation is also a call to further explore the multimodal nature of human interaction and its fundamental characteristics in parallel corpora.
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