More specifically my interests concern the interfaces of language, gesture, cognition, culture and multimodal interaction. Current research areas are the ‚grammar’ of co-verbal gestures with their neuro-cognitive and evolutionary foundations as well as the cognitive processes involved in the use of metaphors in spoken and written discourse.
I am a
professor
for Applied Linguistics, Language- and Culture Contact (Cross-Cultural Communication)
at the Department of Cultural Studies, European-University Viadrina, Frankfurt
(Oder). Together with Ellen Fricke, Katja Liebal and Hedda Lausberg I am heading
an interdisciplinary research project
"Towards a Grammar of Gesture:
Evolution, Brain, and Linguistic Structures“. The project documents
forms, structures, and functions of gesture as a medium of expression and looks
for certain neuro-cognitive and evolutionary foundations of those foundamental
features. Moreover the project researches the integration of gestures into the
grammatical systems of spoken language. In conjunction with Ellen Fricke and
Hedda Lausberg I have founded the
"Berlin Gesture
Center" (BGC), which combines interdisciplinary research and education
of gesture related topics with coaching and other forms of application. In 2000
Adam Kendon and I founded the international journal
"GESTURE",
which will be accompanied by a book series from 2007 onwards.