Iconicity in the Igbo Sign Language (ISL)

Iconicity is a relationship of resemblance or similarity between the two aspects of a sign: its form and its meaning (Meir & Tkachman (2018), and it is a general feature in all sign languages. This work sets out to investigate the manifestation of iconicity in the signing patterns of Igbo home signers, with a view to identifying the forms iconicity take in the language. A wordlist containing some iconically motivated Igbo lexical items is administered to selected deaf Igbo home signers to sign. The pictorial representations of these lexical items are presented and motivations behind them also given. Using the descriptive approach and borrowing a leaf from Edward (2005), the data so collected are analyzed and discussed under the concepts of size and shapes, expression of time, emotive and cognitive signs, and directional verbs. The study observes that the Igbo sign language is highly iconic, and has a great similarity with iconic sings in other African Indigenous Sign Languages such as Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL). The study concludes, in line with cross-linguistic findings, that iconicity is an essential of sign languages. The study recommends more scholarly works on iconicity in other African indigenous sign languages.