Sign Languages and Cognition. Iconicity in lexical signs and what it tells us about conceptual representations

Spoken languages have been commonly used as the point of departure to describe the nature of the concepts in our minds. This narrow focus is perhaps the reason why some theories suggest that concepts consist of abstract, amodal representations disengaged from our senses (Bedny & Saxe, 2012). If, however, we include the sign language of deaf communities in our enquiry, the conclusions may be considerably different. Iconicity, understood as a resemblance relationship between meaning and form (Dingemanse et al., 2020), is a prevalent feature of all sign languages and they offer a unique window to our mental representations. In this chapter, I will argue that the systematic examination of iconic signs, their motivation, and their prevalence across the signed lexicon offer a unique opportunity to understand the constitution of our conceptual representations. Further, by comparing how iconicity is used in established signed lexicons to the pantomimes produced by hearing individuals (i.e., sighted and blind) can we shed light on how our lived experiences shape the concepts in our minds. The picture that emerges is that while different sensorial experiences lead to differences across different populations, our bodily experiences with the world are a central constituent of our mental representations. The studies reported in this chapter make a compelling case that iconicity in the manual-visual modality is a fruitful avenue to explore the nature and composition of the concepts in our mind.