Arkiv: Andre arrangementer

Spontaneous gestures are movements of the hands and arms that people make when they speak. These gestures can parallel speech and indicate the same entities or they can complement speech and indicate an image that is not expressed in speech (Stam, 2006, 2008, in press). Together speech and gesture form an integrated system (Kendon, 1980, 2004; McNeill, 1985, 1992, 2005), and a number of empirical studies (see McCafferty & Stam, 2008, for examples) have shown that looking at gestures along with speech provides an enhanced window onto the mind to investigate language acquisition.

This workshop will demonstrate methods of working with videotaped data in gesture and other nonverbal elements. The features that are important to code, why they are important, and how to go about the process of coding will be discussed. Participants will be encouraged to ask questions concerning the nature of gesture and nonverbal analysis as it applies to the analysis of thought and to second language learning. Participants will also transcribe and code second language data.

The workshop also provides PhD students with an opportunity to present and discuss their own data. If you wish to bring data, please write a short application in which you briefly describe your data. Submit the application electronically to Søren Wind Eskildsen no later than February 25. Acceptance notification will be given shortly thereafter.

This talk compares focus particles in German to the ones in the East Asian language Bangla (also called Bengali).

Foredraget er på tysk, og det holdes i forbindelse med Eva Engels' overbygningsemne Adverbien und Adverbiale: Ihre Stellung und Interpretation

In this talk I will discuss motion verb constructions in Alemannic, a dialect that is spoken in Switzerland and South West Germany. Whereas in Standard German the infinitival complements of motion verbs are either zero marked or show up as a purpose (infinitival) clause, Alemannic uses a special particle gi or go, deriving from the directional preposition gen (= towards):

(1) a. Ich gehe nach Konstanz einkaufe
       I   go   to   Konstanz shop-inf



     b. Ich gehe nach Konstanz um       einzukaufen
        I   go   to   Konstanz in-order to-shop-inf



(2)  I gang uff Konschtanz gi/go eikauffe
     I go   to  Konstanz   PRT   shop-inf

In the first part of the talk I will examine the properties of this construction and propose a structural analysis in terms of pure VP complementation, introduced by a purpose marker. The second part will be concerned with the historical development and it will be shown that Swiss German has re-analysed the particle as a verb (verbal doubling) whereas in German Alemannic, the particle has more properties of a complementizer. This will account for some subtle but systematic differences between the two Alemannic varieties.

This study focuses on the language employed for self- and other-representation in online personal ads posted on www.gay.gr, a popular Greek site meant as a forum for "gay, lesbian, bi, and trans", with the intention of examining aspects of the indexical relation between language, gender, and sexuality (Ochs 1992) among men who pursue same sex relations (i.e. of men who generally identify as homosexual, gay, or using local labels such as pustiδes, aδerfes). Although these ads provide limited information, as they lack the interactive character and thick contextualization of viva voce discourse, they nevertheless allow for highly condensed snapshots of stances and conceptualizations of masculinity and sexuality. Recent research, drawing on some 200 randomly selected ads, has focused specifically on the articulation of desire (cf. Kulick 2000, Cameron & Kulick 2003, 2006) and documented that stereotypical predicates of masculinity, such as manliness, seriousness, discretion, etc., are eroticized and sought after in this particular context. Moreover, in interpreting these findings, it has been suggested that the stress placed on masculinity among the users may well be a reaction to the stereotypical representation of gay men as effeminate (still current to some extent in Greece); an instance of transgressive appropriation of a hegemonic masculinity typically denied them. This line of work has focused on the erotic and abstained from a discussion of "identity" issues in order to avoid the pitfalls of illicit groupings and essentialization. However, revisiting the same pool of data, it becomes apparent that questions of the users’ "identity"/subjectivity are closely intertwined with desire. Indeed, in describing themselves, users talk of their desires while imparting information about who they are in general; and in explaining what they look for in others they tend to eroticize identities rather than sexual acts alone (cf. Bucholtz & Hall 2004). Crucially, rather than shying away from overtly sexual talk in the interest of constructing politically advantageous identities (or attempting simplistic one-to-one alignments of identities and desires), I will attempt to show how the construction of desire and "idenity" appear to be co-present, often indexically related in the data, and, indeed how subjectivity is eroticized in the online personals of gay men in www.gay.gr.

Selected references
Bucholtz, M. & K. Hall. 2004. Theorizing idenity in language and sexuality research. Language in Society 33: 469-515.
Cameron, D. & D. Kulick. 2003. Language and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cameron, D. & D. Kulick (eds.). 2006. The Language and Sexuality Reader. London: Routledge.
Kulick, D. 2000. Gay and lesbian language. Annual Review of Anthropology 29: 243-285.
Ochs, E. 1992. Indexing gender. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 335-358.

Could we imagine a human language that is not complex in structure? According work by Chomsky and his associates this is unthinkable, cf. ‘The faculty of language: what is it, who has it and how did it evolve?’ by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (2002). They argue that recursion, complexity in the syntax, is a property unique to human language and distinguishes our communication from that of animals.
However, Everett (2005) found that Pirahã, an Amazonian language he had worked on for many years, does not have recursive structures, nor does it have a number of other categories generally associated with commonly known languages, e.g. numerals. His work led to a great debate in linguistics: some proponents of generative syntax strongly assert that Everett has to be wrong, trying to counter prove his claims (cf. Nevins, Pesetsky, and Rodrigues (2007/ 2009). Other linguists are cautious due to the somewhat ‘sensational’ nature of Everett’s (2005) claim, rather than the substance of the claim itself. This can be read about in various blogs and letters to the editor. Yet others, even some generative linguists, argue that recursion is less likely to be the only defining characteristic of human language, and offering alternative solutions. There are now various edited collections about complexity and recursion discussing these issues, e.g. Van der Hulst (2010), including Sakel & Stapert (2010).
Most of these publications work with data from a wide variety of languages. Still, a number of linguists rely on the available Pirahã data (e.g. Nevins et al.), without having done any actual fieldwork on the language.
I was lucky to be able to visit the Pirahã and work on their language. In this talk, I will present findings from my own fieldwork on the language and I will argue that it is, indeed, possible for a human language to lack the type of complexity assumed to be universal by some.

Seminar at the Department of International Culture and Communication Studies

This is the first in a series of lectures on cognitive business semiotics and intercultural cognition and communication launched by the Department of International Culture and Communication Studies.

Semiotic in the mix of marketing research
Lucia Santaella

Marketing determines the set of operations which involve the life of commodities, from the planning of its production to the moment when, supported by advertising strategies, it is finally purchased by the consumer. To fulfill its role, marketing has to incorporate not only a mix of services, prices, communication, and distribution, but also a mix of researches. These researches embrace qualitative research, mainly in the form of focus groups, ethnographic research, neuroscience and consuming behavior. The aim of this paper is to discuss the relevance of semiotic analysis of advertising campaigns and products in the context of this mix of researches. Semiotic analysis is not meant to substitute the other types of research but to function as a complement to them.

Adding values: A semiotic strategy in advertising
Winfried Nöth

A major goal of an advertising campaign is to increase, in the consumers' minds, the value of the product for sale. Since advertising campaigns have no influence on the real values of the products which they present, their strategies of increasing the values to the product are semiotic ones. Iconic, indexical, and symbolic signs of values are presented next to the product with the purpose of creating associations between the product and these values in the consumers' minds. The goal of such associations is the transfer of semiotic values to the ones of the product for sale.

Programme:

Data session 1: 10:15 – 11:45

Lunch: 11:45 – 12:30

Data session 2: 12:30 – 14:00

Data session 3: 14:00 - 15:00