Regiolects of the Russian sign language: A multimodal electronic corpus (based on the communicative space of Eastern Siberia)

Abstract

The article reflects the results of a study focused on the variable features of Russian sign language (RSL) in a large region of Eastern Siberia. The work analyzes the modern sociolinguistic landscape of regional variants of RSL and describes the specifics of its functioning in such subjects as Krasnoyarsky Krai, Irkutsk Oblast’, Tyva and Khakassia Republics. The main scientific and practical result of the study of RSL regional variants is presented in the format of developing an electronic multimodal corpus of sign language for a large region of Russia in the amount of 600–800 signs for each territory based on marking the most frequent signs that coincide in the subregions of Siberia, as well as being semiotically differentiated according to the selected territories. Thus, the proposed material summarizes the experience of conducting institutional and linguistic monitoring of RSL representation in the region and creating an electronic platform for the assembled corpus of signs. The use of sign language is considered as one of the analogues of multimodal communication. At the same time, the term “multimodality” is also applied to the format of the platform, which is designed on the basis of several channels of information transmission and manifests itself in the integrality of various technological modes. The novelty of the study lies in the analytical, theoretical and applied examination of the insufficiently studied and described variants of RSL of the Eastern Siberia region and in the possibility of their linguistic documentation based on electronic material fixation.