Presented by Jennifer Hinnell is a Killam Laureate and PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta under Dr. Sally Rice. Her research spans cognitive and corpus linguistics, multimodality, and gesture studies.
See the 'Language in the Body' Presentation
Abstract: Cognitive linguists have long acknowledged the role of embodiment and interaction on both the structure and meaning of language. However, until recently, movements of the body that accompany face-to-face interaction have not been included in the analysis of linguistic expressions. In my research, I investigate the role of the body as a critical part of linguistic meaning-making. I use the Red Hen archive, an international multimedia database of broadcast media, as well as motion capture data, to examine language use across a range of expressions in specific linguistic and conceptual domains. In addition to investigating the linguistic features involved in a particular utterance, I explore the usage patterns in the manual gestures, head movements, shoulder shrugs, postural shifts, eye-gaze, and brow movements. Using corpus annotation methodologies and quantitative and statistical analysis, I capture a range of linguistic and kinesic usage patterns that speakers produce with particular utterances. The research provides evidence for the coordinated and recurrent bodily enactment of grammatical and discourse-level expressions and addresses issues at the centre of multimodal research, such as the degree of convention and, by the same token, the degree of variation inherent in the kinesic signal. The research has implications for language documentation and description, especially of languages that rely predominantly on verbal and visual signals (e.g. signed and oral Indigenous languages). It also has applications in multimedia technologies, e.g. in virtual agents that rely on human-like language use and animated dialogue in films and video games.