On July 2, 2024, E. Mara Green, assistant professor of anthropology, published a new book titled Making Sense: Language, Ethics, and Understanding in Deaf Nepal. The book was published by University of California Press, with an open-access ebook version available through Luminos.
Making Sense explores the experiential, ethical, and intellectual stakes of a world where language cannot be taken for granted. As Green explains, two forms of signing are used in Nepal: Nepali Sign Language (NSL), a conventional sign language, and what is known by NSL signers as “natural sign.” Natural sign employs conventional as well as improvisatory signs, many of which draw from semiotic relations inherent to the signers’ social and material world. Successful conversations using natural sign depend on signers’ skillful use of the resources around them and on both parties’ willingness to engage. In Making Sense, Green explores both conventional and emergent signed communication, challenging readers to consider what it means to understand and to be understood.