While iconicity has sometimes been defined as meaning transparency, it is better defined as a subjective phenomenon bound to an individual’s perception and influenced by their previous language experience. In this article, I investigate the subjective nature of iconicity through an experiment in which 72 deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing (signing and non-signing) participants rate the iconicity of individual letters of the American Sign Language (ASL) and Swedish Sign Language (STS) manual alphabets. It is shown that L1 signers of ASL and STS rate their own (L1) manual alphabet as more iconic than the foreign one. Hearing L2 signers of ASL and STS exhibit the same pattern as L1 signers, showing an iconic preference for their own (L2) manual alphabet. In comparison, hearing non-signers show no general iconic preference for either manual alphabet. Across all groups, some letters are consistently rated as more iconic in one sign language than the other, illustrating general iconic preferences. Overall, the results align with earlier findings from sign language linguistics that point to language experience affecting iconicity ratings and that one’s own signs are rated as more iconic than foreign signs with the same meaning, even if similar iconic mappings are used.

中文翻译：

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更好的字母：美国手语和瑞典手语手册字母表中的象似性

虽然象似性有时被定义为意义透明度，但它更好地被定义为一种与个人感知相关并受其先前语言经验影响的主观现象。在本文中，我通过一项实验研究了象似性的主观本质，其中 72 名聋哑人、听力障碍者和听力正常（手语和非手语）参与者对美国手语 (ASL) 和瑞典语中各个字母的象似性进行了评分手语 (STS) 手册字母表。结果表明，ASL 和 STS 的 L1 手语者认为自己的 (L1) 手写字母比外国手写字母更具标志性。ASL 和 STS 的听力 L2 手语者表现出与 L1 手语者相同的模式，表现出对自己的 (L2) 手语字母表的标志性偏好。相比之下，听力正常的非手语者对任何一种手动字母表都没有表现出普遍的图标偏好。在所有群体中，某些字母在一种手语中始终被认为比另一种手语更具标志性，这说明了一般的标志性偏好。总体而言，这些结果与手语语言学的早期发现一致，即语言体验影响象似性评级，并且即使使用类似的象形映射，自己的手语也比具有相同含义的外国手语更具标志性。