Embodied language: Gesture, gaze and interaction

How does the body fit into communication? What do eye gaze and gestures contribute to spoken or signed interactions? Do we gesture differently when we are speaking with friends than with our boss or clients in a professional situation? Do speakers of different languages and with different cultural backgrounds gesture differently? How is gesturing distinct from signed languages? Human language is inherently embodied and grounded in our physical/sensory perception of the world.

In this unit we investigate the multimodal, embodied nature of language and its implication for cognition. Multimodality characterizes any kind of communicative practice that draws on linguistic, aural, textual, spatial and visual resources to compose messages. We consider the interaction of spoken language and speech-accompanying gesture, the nature of signed languages multimodality in Aboriginal Australia, and the role of gesture and joint attention in child language acquisition, among other topics. We investigate cultural and linguistic differences in the domain of multimodality and the methodologies which are employed to study multimodal communication.

You will use this knowledge to design a research proposal for analysing multimodal data and to describe the role and nature of multimodality and embodiment in communication.