PERSONAL EXPERIENCE NARRATIVES IN ADAMOROBE SIGN LANGUAGE

Personal experience narratives are produced spontaneously by deaf people in informal conversations. Even when the content is not explicitly about being deaf, the fact of being told in sign language makes it an authentic part of sign language literature. Complete narratives have a tripartite structure, divided in introduction, development and conclusion. Typically, the action follows a curve, with its peak on a climax. Besides initial reference to time and space, characters are presented and participate in the plot. Sign languages often use constructed action to materialize characters. In African sign languages, few personal experience narratives have been studied in relation to their content, except for references to topics, mainly in the village sign language of Adamorobe, in Ghana. In the current work, an analysis of narratives about snake attacks, produced in Adamorobe Sign Language by two deaf signers, illustrate how these stories are internally structured and recur to constructed action.