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Creating Connections With an Unseen Audience: Discourse Features of Asynchronous Video Announcements in NZSL

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Date

2025

Authors

Greenwood, Catherine

Supervisor

Major, George

Item type

Thesis

Degree name

Master of Language and Culture

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Publisher

Auckland University of Technology

Abstract

Information sharing within the Aotearoa New Zealand Deaf community has changed rapidly over the last decade or so. New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) information is increasingly being shared through online informative video posts on social media. Traditionally Deaf people have gathered face-to-face in Deaf spaces such as Deaf Clubs to share information, so new online ways of sharing information are a stark and rapid change. Deaf presenters are now sharing information asynchronously and without a visible audience to give feedback about clarity and levels of engagement. The current study explores discourse strategies used by Deaf presenters in asynchronous NZSL informative videos, paving the way for a deeper understanding of how NZSL is evolving. This study explores a dataset of 15 NZSL videos produced by nine fluent Deaf signers, published online (Facebook and YouTube) between 2020 and 2022. It was data driven and so began by examining general discourse features in the videos. Pausing was then selected as a key feature for more detailed discourse analysis. This revealed that pauses often function as discourse markers, used deliberately to organise asynchronous information for clarity and cohesion. Pauses also were used for grammatical purposes and to draw focus to the talk. The study also explores explicit references to the unseen audience through presenters’ use of pronominal pronouns, drawing on Goffman’s (1981) participation framework. I analysed both first-person and second-person pronouns to better understand how the presenters imagined their audience. The analysis showed that referencing varied depending on the context of the talk. Footing shifts were observed through changes in pronoun use, showing signer alignment with their audience. Signers sometimes explicitly addressed their audience as a mass group, sometimes as a group of multiple individuals, and sometimes as individual addressees. While some decision-making likely represents personal style differences, discourse analysis allows us to understand deliberate pronoun choices (and shifts) within the context they occurred. This study contributes new insights into NZSL use, and a greater understanding of strategies used by experienced Deaf presenters in this relatively new form of information dissemination in NZSL. It offers research-based material for future discussions within the Deaf community about the purposes of informative videos, characteristics of successful videos, and strategies to optimise connections with the unseen audience.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10292/18834

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Masters Theses