LLS Colloquium: A multimodal turn in language sciences

On Wednesday 2nd February 2022, Asli Özyürek (Radboud University/Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior) will be presenting on "A multimodal turn in language sciences".

A multimodal turn in language sciences

One of the unique aspects of human language is that in face-to-face communication it is universally multimodal (e.g., Holler and Levinson, 2019; Perniss, 2018). All hearing and deaf communities around the world use vocal and/or visual modalities (e.g., hands, body, face) with different affordances for semiotic and linguistic expression (e.g., Goldin-Meadow and Brentani, 2015; Vigliocco et al., 2014; Özyürek and Woll, 2019). Visual articulators in both co-speech gesture and sign, unlike speech, have unique affordances for visible iconic, indexical (e.g., pointing) and simultaneous representations due to the use of multiple articulators. Such expressions have been considered in traditional linguistics as being “external” to the language system. I will however argue and show evidence for the fact that both spoken languages and sign languages combine such modality-specific expressions with arbitrary, categorical and sequential expressions in their language structures in cross-linguistically different ways (e.g. Azar, Backus, Özyürek, 2109; Özyürek, 2018; 2021). Furthermore they modulate language processing, expressions of communicative intent and efficiency, face-to-face interaction (Rasenberg, Özyürek, and Dingemanse, 2020; Trujillo et al, 2021) and language acquisition (e.g., Furman, Kuntay, Özyürek,2014; Karadoller, 2021), suggesting that they are an integral design feature of a unified  multimodal language system- patterned in intricately different ways in different languages. I will end my talk with discussion on how a multimodal (but not unimodal one) view  of language can actually explain the dynamic, adaptive and flexible aspects of our language system enabling  optimally  to bridge  the human biological, cognitive and learning constraints to the interactive, culturally varying  communicative requirements of face-to-face context.

The talk will take place at 4pm on Zoom, and there will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end - you can join using this link. 

Event poster: LLS Colloquium: A multimodal turn in language sciences