29.4076, Calls: Linguistic Theories, Pragmatics, Syntax/Germany

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-4076. Thu Oct 18 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.4076, Calls: Linguistic Theories, Pragmatics, Syntax/Germany

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Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2018 22:44:16
From: Claudia Lehmann [cllehmann at uos.de]
Subject: Gestures, Facial Expressions and Body Posture in CxG Accounts of Language: Core or Periphery?

 
Full Title: Gestures, Facial Expressions and Body Posture in CxG Accounts of Language: Core or Periphery? 

Date: 21-Aug-2019 - 24-Aug-2019
Location: Leipzig, Germany 
Contact Person: Claudia Lehmann
Meeting Email: cllehmann at uos.de

Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories; Pragmatics; Syntax 

Call Deadline: 15-Nov-2018 

Meeting Description:

Workshop proposal for the 51st annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica
Europaea (SLE) 2019, Leipzig, Germany, August 21-24
  
Gestures, Facial Expressions and Body Posture in CxG Accounts of Language:
Core or Periphery?
 
Organized by Dr. des. Claudia Lehmann (cllehmann at uos.de) and Dr. phil. Meike
Pentrel (mpentrel at uos.de), Universität Osnabrück

Call Deadline: 15 Nov 2018

Keywords: Construction Grammar, Multimodal Construction Grammar, gestures,
body language, constructions

This workshop aims at investigating the relationship between verbal
expressions and gestures, facial expressions and body posture using
Construction Grammar (e.g. Goldberg 2006, Hoffmann & Trousdale 2013), or CxG,
as the theoretical background. As Langacker (2008: 250) points out: “Manual
gestures [...], facial expressions, actions performed more globally (e.g. a
shrug), and even factors like body language [...] may all be closely bound up
with linguistic expressions, in which case they can hardly be excluded from
‘language’ on an a priori basis.” CxG provides a powerful framework for
accounting for this very relationship. Its units of analysis, constructions,
are defined as form-meaning pairings (e.g. Croft 2001: 18) and besides verbal
expressions, gestures and the like can be such forms.
 
Recently, research on multimodal CxG has started to address these issues (e.g.
Steen & Turner 2013, Zima & Bergs 2017). Quite a few publications report on
notable co-occurrences of constructions and gestures (Schoonjans, Brône &
Feyaerts 2015, Zima 2014a, Hsu, Brône & Feyaerts 2018). In the light of these
findings, some researchers suggest that certain “constructions may not only
have verbal but also gestural structure” (Zima 2014b: 27) and that gestures
are thus integral parts of specific constructions. In these, gestural and
verbal parts combine to arrive at a holistic meaning that is more than the sum
of its parts (Schoonjans 2018). While multimodal CxG so far mainly focuses on
gestures, the present workshop likes to include facial expressions and other
bodily expressions, e.g. posture, in the discussion. Like gestures, body
language and facial expressions also recurrently co-occur with certain
expressions/constructions. An informal observation suggests, for example, that
the construction Tell me about it, which is associated with an ironic meaning
by convention, is often accompanied by a facial expression known as ''blank
face'' whereas its non-constructional counterpart (the sincere request) is
not. However, the ironic construction is likewise accompanied by a flat
intonation contour and so the question remains, if and to what extent “the
body” can be seen as part of a construction since probably not all facets of a
construction will be stored in the constructicon, i.e. the mental repository
of constructs (cf. Goldberg 2013, Hoffmann 2017).


Yet, the notion of multimodal constructions is controversial. Since such
constructions seem to also work in non-face-to-face situations, there are
voices which analyse gestures not as integral but “as constructions in their
own right that enter into crossmodal collostructions with linguistic items”
(Uhrig 2018) while others argue that truly multimodal constructions (as
described by Schoonjans (2018) above), which are stored in the long-term
memory, are rare phenomena (Hoffmann 2017). Given the variability of gestures
and their potential infrequent co-occurrence with verbal expressions, the
entire idea of multimodal constructions can easily be challenged (cf. Cienki
2018).

Although opinions remain divergent as to whether multimodal constructions
truly exist (Ningelgen & Auer 2017; Schoonjans 2017), the fact that embedded
depictions serve as constituents of canonical verbal utterances argues for
multimodal semiotic signals being integral parts of constructions.

Call for Papers:

Following from these different approaches this workshop addresses among others
the following questions and issues:

- Are constructions multimodal or is each bodily expression a construction in
its own right? 
- Are gestures/facial expressions part of the constructions stored in the
constructicon or are they idiosyncratic occurrences that cannot be
generalized? 
- Are there constructions that are always accompanied by gestures, facial
expressions etc., even in non-face-to-face conversations? Does the lack
thereof lead to miscomprehension? 
- Are facial expressions universal or cultural specific? Even if they differ,
are there certain constructions that are more prone to be accompanied by
facial expressions than others? 
- How can we incorporate bodily actions in a CxG model? 
- The entrenchment of gestures 
- The acquisition of gestures and facial expressions (as part of
constructions) 
- Is there a special type of gesture that is especially prone to become part
of a construction (e.g. metaphoric gestures, iconic, etc.)?

The workshop invites general papers addressing the relationship between bodily
expressions and construction grammar as well as papers featuring case studies
on that relationship.
Provisional titles and abstracts (up to 300 words) may be sent until November
15 to Claudia Lehmann (cllehmann at uos.de).




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