AustLit

'Green's book provides a fascinating and fine-grained analysis of a traditional narrative practice among Arrernte women that entails the telling of ‘sand stories’. Green's principle concern is how the technique of sand drawing is used in conjunction with speech, gesture, hand signs and song to communicate meaning. The complexity of sand story narration is such that it is difficult to separate these different semiotic modalities from each other. Indeed, ‘in isolation, each of these modalities does not carry the entire message’ (2014: 90). Accordingly, Green focuses on sand drawing as part of an ‘ensemble’ of expressive forms. Her approach is informed by new developments in linguistics and anthropology which view language as more than just speech and emphasise its embodied nature.' (Introduction)