This project will challenge traditional ideas about ‘language’ and ‘grammar’ through a series of studies on Norwegian Sign Language. Norwegian Sign Language is an indigenous, minority language in Norway, with an estimated 20,000 speakers (both deaf and hearing). The goal of the project is to research how deaf signers use this language, and how this use reflects the specific physical, social, historical and emerging characteristics of the Norwegian deaf community.

Studies conducted during the project will investigate how deaf signers 1) use all the languages that they know (e.g., Norwegian Sign Language, Norwegian, English, etc.), 2) use pointing and other types of signs to refer to people, objects, places, etc. out in the world, and 3) manipulate signs and grammar to show meanings visually.

To complete these studies, the project will develop two Norwegian Sign Language resources: a corpus (which is a large, representative sample of the language), and a lexical database (which is a type of expanded dictionary). These long-term resources are a secondary aim of the project. They will enable further description and research on Norwegian Sign Language and are important for the deaf community and Norwegian society, more generally, because they work to document a part of Norway’s linguistic heritage.

The findings from this project will not only help us to understand how Norwegian Sign Language works, but will also help us to better understand how people, both deaf and hearing, are able to recruit various types of meaning-making strategies to communicate and interact with each other. In this way, the project will promote a perspective of language that accommodates the always changing interplay of complex visual, tactile, and verbal communication in everyday life.