Have you ever thought how you’d imitate a ladybug? Exactly, neither had I. Until one day I got presented with that precise request during my Italian Sign Language (LIS) class. As silly as it may sound, that day will probably go down as one of the most anxiety-inducing experiences of my life.
It took me a second to actually understand what was being asked by my deaf teacher, partly because my LIS was still shaky, and partly because some part of me was still hoping I misunderstood the exercise. Once I did, my only response was to be blocked. I asked not to do the exercise, and I got told (in LIS, which I was still learning and, therefore, struggled to comprehend) that it was a mandatory thing to do. From the outside, I’m fully aware of how this sounds: a grown adult refusing to pretend to be a ladybug in a language class, as if it were some kind of crisis. But it really felt like one.
So, I made the mistake of escalating it. I tried to explain my internal struggle in my still-limited Italian (as a Spaniard who had recently moved to Italy). I remember the frustration of not having the words in either language to fully unpack what I was actually feeling. I was trying to talk my way out of a wordless task using words I didn’t fully have either.
But enough with the drama. What exactly was happening? Well, I was just shy, and embarrassed at the prospect of imitating a ladybug in front of 15 other people. As someone who has lived my whole life using oral languages, I’m used to language “passing” through the mouth and remaining more-or-less socially invisible. What I mean is that I can speak without anyone watching my face or my hands. Suddenly, I was being asked to use my whole body and be seen by everyone else while producing it. This was a very new and very exposing situation. In fact, if anyone reading this knows LIS, they probably know that the sign for ladybug definitely doesn’t require you to impersonate one, but instead it’s rather minimal (using only the hands).
So why was I being asked to mimic a ladybug at all? Because what I was being taught was not the sign itself. I was being trained to use the channel: I needed to unlock my face, my body and my space, not as a complement to the language, but as the place where it actually lives, a core part of the grammar itself. That was the real target. Failing the exercise didn’t mean failing at vocabulary, it meant resisting the very channel through which the language is built.
To someone who’s never learned a sign language, the word “grammar” probably summons verb tables and word order structures. In sign languages, though, grammar lives in places you might not expect. Where you place a person in the signing space in front of you isn’t just decorative. It can function like a pronoun, letting you refer to “that person” just by pointing to the same spot again later in the discourse. The direction your hands move in certain verbs tells you who is doing what to whom. Your face isn’t just carrying emotion, either. A simple raise of the eyebrows can mark a question, or a slight tilt of the head to the right can mark a conjunction. Miss one of these cues, and you miss the meaning or the tone of what’s being said.
This is, in fact, true of any sign language, not only LIS. And it’s exactly why imitating a ladybug isn’t just cosmetic. If grammar itself lives in your face, your hands and your posture, then learning it means learning to move through all of that in front of other people. It demands that learners make mistakes with their face and body in public. And the only way to advance is to expose yourself repeatedly without fear of being shamed or judged. This stands in contrast to learning an oral language, where a “strange” accent goes far more unnoticed than a “ridiculous” sign or an exaggerated facial expression (or, in this case, the imitation of a bug).
There’s something else I also understood much later: in an oral conversation you can look away, glance at your phone, half-listen, and the words will still reach you. In sign language, if you’re not looking, the conversation simply doesn’t happen. Learning to stop panicking under other people’s eyes wasn’t just about tolerating embarrassment, it was my first lesson in what it actually means to be present for someone in LIS. Attention isn’t just a courtesy in sign languages, but the minimum condition for the language to exist at all.
But coming back to that day. What ended up happening was that I was allowed to sit the exercise out. I was told, however, that this was a one-time pass and that the next lesson I would have to do it. Not doing it would mean I could not continue in the course. Months later, we do this kind of exercise frequently. I imitate the grass, a tree, a tennis ball, maybe correctly, maybe badly, but always self-consciously. I wouldn’t say I’ve become an extrovert, or that I don’t feel the same flicker of shame every time the teacher says “now everyone act out”. It honestly still makes me uncomfortable. But somewhere along the way, this discomfort stopped being a wall and became just the cost of entry. After the exercise is done, I sit back down and nothing happens. No one laughs at me the way I feared they would that first day. I learned to expose myself.
So, would I recommend a hearing person learn a sign language? Absolutely! But maybe not for the reason people usually expect. It’s not just a useful skill, or a nice gesture toward accessibility (although, it is obviously both of those things too). It’s one of the few ways I know to genuinely understand that language can live entirely in the body, in space, in a face, and lose none of its precision or its grammar along the way. And you don’t just learn that fact. You have to survive it (maybe a little clumsily) in front of other people. If you’ve ever wanted a crash course in what language actually is, I can personally recommend starting with a ladybug.
Sergio Cámara Mateos is a doctoral researcher at ISTC-CNR in Rome and the University of Florence, as part of the SCALA Horizon Europe Doctoral Network. His research looks at the comprehension of manual and non-manual cues as spatial reference in deaf signers of Italian Sign Language, considering both their grammaticalized and social roles in sign language.
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