Redebegleitende
Gesten. Kulturgeschichte – Theorie – Sprachvergleich, „Co-verbal
gestures. Cultural history – Theory – Cross-linguistic comparison“).
In my second book I concentrated on metaphor theory focusing on the interface
of semantics, pragmatics and cognition ( Metaphors
– Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking. A cognitive approach to metaphors
in language use).I address these topics based on analyses of spoken language in it’s multimodal manifestations. This has methodological consequences in that I will use micro-analytic methods as well as cognitive linguistic methods to reconstruct cognitive on-line processes, which in turn may lead to new insights into the linguistic system (topics are: typological variation, activation of metaphoricity in language use, relation of system and use). Analyses of spoken language are supplemented by the analysis of texts in newspapers and exemples from scientific encyclopedias. The purpose of analysing ordinary language it is various instantiations is theoretical not purely descriptive: theoretical issues such as the activation of metaphoricity of so-called ‚dead’ metaphors, the relation of language use and system (metaphors as a phenomenon of use or of system) or the influence of typological variation onto thought ("Thinking for Speaking and Gesturing") during speaking.
Another area of my research are social and cultural dimension of language use, specifically the „ordinary reflections of language use“: topics in this area are the primacy for verbal communication and the disregard of bodily forms of communication which is a running thread through the cultural history of the old world; the interrelation of language and taboo; and the multimodality of social interaction.
