Making Sense

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Making Sense explores the experiential, ethical, and intellectual stakes of living in, and thinking with, worlds wherein language cannot be taken for granted. In Nepal, many deaf signers use Nepali Sign Language (NSL), a young, conventional signed language. The majority of deaf Nepalis, however, use what NSL signers call natural sign. Natural sign involves conventional and improvisatory signs, many of which recruit semiotic relations immanent in the social and material world. These features make conversation in natural sign both possible and precarious. Sense-making in natural sign depends on signers' skillful use of resources and on addressees' willingness to engage. Natural sign reveals the labor of sense-making that in more conventional language is carried by shared grammar. Ultimately, this highly original book shows that emergent language is an ethical endeavor, challenging readers to consider what it means, and what it takes, to understand and to be understood. 

E. Mara Green is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College, Columbia University.

"Making Sense delves into the heart of what it means for people to understand each other when they cannot take communication for granted. The book is one of the best ethnographic studies about deaf people and signing practices that I’ve read."—Lina Hou, Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara

"Beautifully organized and conceived, highlighting in depth the ethical dimensions of communication and understanding."—Kristin Snoddon, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director, School of Early Childhood Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University

"Mara Green delves into Nepali deaf communities' own linguistic frameworks, challenging mainstream sign language research methodologies and classifications. Moreover, she presents a unique and rare exploration of the meaning of 'understanding,' captured through an astutely observant and culturally respectful lens."—Annelies Kusters, Professor of Sociolinguistics, Heriot-Watt University

"This is an extraordinary work that carefully integrates thick ethnographic description with linguistic analysis. Green develops a novel and creative conceptual framework for understanding human sociality. What makes her work so compelling is that she argues that communication has a deeply ethical dimension—one that few other scholars have theorized in as powerful a way."—Marjorie Goodwin, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles