Since 2012, I’ve investigated how people San Juan Quiahije, an indigenous Chatino community in Oaxaca, Mexico, use their bodies to convey linguistic information.

Hearing people in the community blend visual and auditory language to create complex multimodal messages. I investigate how these messages are formed on the move, during navigational activities. My current projects focus on how demonstrative expressions (the rough equivalents of English ‘this’ and ‘that’) and direction terms are paired with pointing gestures.

Deaf people in San Juan Quiahije adapt the gesturing conventions in the community so that rich messages can be expressed in a fully visual system. My work documents the strategies that hearing and deaf Chatinos share, and highlights areas where deaf people are creating new linguistic structures.