Learning outcomes

The participants to this course will be led to master the fundamental characteristics of the Sign Language of Southern Belgium (LSFB). The course will notably focus on the use of space, the relation between gaze and the hands in space, and the use of iconic structres proper to sign languages. The course will also present the specificities of the Deaf community (as linguistic and cultural community).

Goals

The objectives are those of level A1 of the CERCL: elementary user, introductory or discovery level.

Content

Sign languages are the natural languages that have always been spoken in deaf communities. They are not international languages constructed from scratch, but languages born of the encounter between deaf people. These languages are numerous. They vary and evolve like spoken languages. Like spoken languages, they make it possible to say anything, to lie, to play with signs and turn them into poetry. But they do this in a different way: visuo-gestural. The grammar of sign languages is constructed in space and organised around the signer's gaze. Sign languages make extremely subtle use of the resources of visual iconicity. This course, given jointly by a linguist and a deaf teacher who is a native speaker of Langue des Signes Françaises de Belgique (LSFB), is an opportunity for anyone interested in language and languages to discover a highly original expression of the human capacity for language. It's also an opportunity to experience another culture, so close and yet so different, that of the deaf community.

Assessment method

Written examination (comprehension tasks) and oral examination (expression tasks)

Language of instruction

Anglais