Coronavirus, quarantine and positivity in Italian sign language (LIS). Rethinking signs in the COVID-19b emergency

The lexicon of Italian Sign language (LIS) offers, in a given historical period, an interesting balance between a linguistic repertoire which has been created and maintained across centuries by the deaf signing community despite diachronic changes, and some moving areas where synchronic variation testifies how the language can be progressively adapted to external functional forces. Signers continuously refine and expand the lexicon, creating new forms and following the systematicity of their language at the same time. The health emergency due to COVID-19 pandemic and the following rich production of linguistic materials represent an interesting time window during which the Italian signing community has elaborated new forms of signs or has provided relevant reflections on new connotations of existing signs. The focus of the present study is on two signs (coronavirus and quarantine) for which, in the first two months of COVID emergency, several variants have been in use in the media and in the social networks accessible to deaf people. These variants refer to various representational strategies linked to specific characteristics of lexical elements already existing in LIS or in other sign languages. Furthermore, we will present an example of how the Italian signing community has afforded the use an already existing sign (positive) in health-related contexts, where its meaning looked different. The observation of metalinguistic discussion going on between LIS signers will offer the opportunity to consider the relationship between norm and variation in LIS in a new perspective.