The Cultural Factors in Shaping Image for Sign Lexicalisation

Food as part of a society’s culture constitutes a cultural aspect that is quite capable of representing the customs of society as well as the dynamics of social and economic changes that occur in society. With this general background, this paper aims to examine the basis of image selection of food signs in Kata Kolok sign language. The qualitative method of analysis is used with a focus on the linguistic phenomenon that exist in the deaf community of Bengkala village, northern part of Bali Island. The data used in this study were collected from Kata Kolok corpus data available at www.signbank.ru.nl. From the available sign data, this study focuses on food signs data, which is then classified into traditional food and non-traditional food. From the results, it can be claimed that the deaf community of Bengkala village chose how to make food as an image that was selected to be a sign for traditional food because people in the village have good traditional knowledge about processing those foods. Meanwhile, the image chosen as a representation of non-traditional food is the appearance of the food.