Visual Vernacular in South African Sign Language
by Atiyah Asmal and Michiko Kaneko

This article explores a unique storytelling technique, called Visual Vernacular (VV), in creative texts in South African Sign Language (SASL). VV is known as a highly visual, gestural, and cinematic way of telling stories in sign language, but the precise nature of VV has never been explored in depth. Making use of the collection of SASL poems and stories recently assembled by Morgan and Kaneko (2018), we identify the elements of VV and their accompanying features, focusing on eye gaze, eye aperture, and mouth gestures. We also suggest a distinction between action-based VV and description-based VV, and discuss their features accordingly.