ABSTRACT
Sign languages are natural human languages developed and used by deaf communities around the world. They use the hands, face and body as articulators to convey linguistic meaning through a visual, spatial, and kinetic modality, as opposed to spoken languages, which rely primarily on sound patterns created by the speech articulators. Such fundamental differences in the mode of representation have made sign languages particularly relevant for linguists who are interested in mode-specific and/or mode-independent features of metaphors. While we will mostly focus on metaphor in everyday signing in relation to conceptual metaphor theory (see Chapter 1), the specific question of literary metaphors in sign language is also a fascinating topic that has been addressed in recent years (see Christie and Wilkins 1997; Taub 2001a; Wilcox 2000; Sutton-Spence and Kaneko 2016).
