Coming back to the issue of the graphical representation of Sign Language (SL) discourse in SL linguistic research ✝Elena Antinoro Pizzuto1 and Brigitte Garcia2 1 ISTC-CNR Roma, 2 UMR 7023 SFL (University Paris 8-University Paris-Lumières & CNRS) This chapter is a tribute to Elena Antinoro Pizzuto (EAP). It addresses issues related to the graphical representation of discourse in sign language (SL) linguistics. This topic was one of the spearheads of EAP and the Deaf and hearing team she had established in the early 2000s and animated over the following decade, the Sign Language Laboratory (ISTC-CNR). This contribution is based on the many articles and talks that EAP and her team produced during this period (e.g. Pizzuto et al 2006, Antinoro Pizzuto et al 2010), as well as on an unpublished manuscript (Antinoro Pizzuto & Cuxac 2010). It also draws on the work of the second author (e.g. Garcia 2006, Garcia & Sallandre 2013), who inevitably assumes responsibility for updating some of the arguments used at the time. Thus, this chapter, which is intended to be as close as possible to EAP’s ideas, intertwines the voices of the two authors, all the closer as they shared the same theoretical framework, the “Semiological Approach” (e.g. Cuxac 1999, Cuxac & Sallandre 2007, Cuxac & Antinoro Pizzuto 2010). The chapter first reports on the issues we both believed are raised by the most widespread graphical representations of the signed discourse, namely “gloss-based notations”. Graphical representation that enables the reconstruction of forms (signifiers) is a prerequisite for the analysis of any language. The limitations of graphical practices in SL linguistics are pointed out from this perspective, firstly by highlighting the atypical nature of what is referred to as "glosses”. These glosses are no more than direct labelling of the signed utterances in the national spoken language (SpL), whereas, in the annotation of SpLs, a gloss is a secondary addition accompanying a primary representation of the forms of the linguistic material examined (Pizzuto & Pietrandrea 2001). The methodological biases resulting from these atypical practices are then presented. They are particularly striking when, as it is for the Semiological Approach, we consider as central the structures furthest from those of SpLs, the so-called "transfer structures" (mutatis mutandis, classifier constructions/depicting signs and role shifts/constructed actions, see Garcia 2010, Garcia & Sallandre 2014). Although so numerous in SL discourse (e.g. Sallandre 2003, Antinoro Pizzuto et al 2008b, Sallandre et al 2016), these constructions remain the most difficult to represent by glosses (see Johnston 2016). The issues related to these practices are finally both epistemological and ethical (e.g. Bucholtz 2000, Di Renzo et al 2009, Garcia 2016). It is precisely in a concrete attempt to overcome these challenges that EAP and her team experimented for ten years with the potential of the SignWriting system to transcribe the signed discourse (e.g. Antinoro Pizzuto et al 2008a, Petitta et al 2013). Although this experience was interrupted when EAP left us, it continues in her team members’ graphical practices (e.g. Petitta et al 2015). We do not claim to provide a turnkey solution to the problem at hand. We simply reaffirm its heuristic scope: the need to rethink the undeniable influence of national SpLs' writing on the way we describe SLs. References Antinoro Pizzuto, E., Chiari, I. & Rossini, P. 2008 [Antinoro Pizzuto et al 2008a]. The representation issue and its multifaceted aspects in constructing sign language corpora: questions, answers, further problems. In O. Crasborn, E. Efthimiou, T. 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