Volume 68, Issue 4 - Special Issue: Multimodality in Language and Communication; Guest Editor: Peter Uhrig

Aspectuality of events has been shown to be construed through various means in typologically diverse languages, ranging from mainly grammatical devices to conventionalized lexical means. The rise of multimodal studies in linguistics allows incorporating yet another semiotic layer into the description. In this context, we present a cross-linguistic study of multimodal event construals in Czech and English spontaneous conversations, based on multimodal corpora. We follow Croft’s (2012) cognitive model of aspectual types, in order to take into account multiple parameters (out of which the features of (un)boundedness and directedness are the most prominent) determining a particular aspectual contour of a verb in a given context. We investigate which feature combinations are associated with (un)boundedness of corresponding co-speech gestures. The multivariate analysis revealed that in English, gesture boundedness is predicted by the predicate’s general aspectual type, whereas in Czech, the more fine-grained features of directedness and incrementality are stronger predictors.

The study analyses the RT USA show “The News with Rick Sanchez” to identify persuasive and manipulative communication strategies realised by the host’s integration of speech and co-speech gestures. What cognitive systems, conceptual processes and schemas does the speaker employ to construct and communicate viewpoint? What linguistic and gestural units enable certain viewpoint construction? What role does social context play in the interpretation of these units? After a quantitative overview of the use of body-directed and related outward-directed gestures in 180 minutes of RT recordings, the study offers a fine-grained qualitative analysis of viewpoint construction behind four situations from these RT data. It develops an advanced cognitive-linguistic approach anchored in conceptual blending (Fauconnier and Turner 2002) and the cognitive system of force dynamics (Talmy 1988, 2000). The study argues that this approach is successful in revealing speech-gesture integrations as triggering viewpoint blending for the purpose of manipulation and is useful for transferring manual qualitative analysis to analysis at scale.

This chapter will explore the embodied , enacted and embedded nature of co-speech gestures in the meaning-making process of time conceptualization. We will review three different contextualized communicative exchanges extracted from American Television interviews. First, we will offer a step-by-step form description of the different gesture realizations performed by the speakers as well as a brief description of the gaze fixation patterns. After that, we will offer a functional analysis which will interpret the gesturing patters in terms of their communicative goals on their respective communicative contexts as well as the complex interplay between verbal and non-verbal communication. The resulting interaction between speech, gesture and other bodily movements give rise to a dynamic system that allows for the construction of highly complex meanings: time co-speech gestures play a crucial role in the simulation of virtual anchors for complex mental networks that integrate conceptual and perceptual information.

This article aims to illustrate some aspects of film dubbing that are of interest to research in cognition and in particular to cognitive linguistics. Dubbed films contain unavoidable discrepancies between the lip movements and (other) gestures perceived visually and the sounds that are heard. Widening the scope to the issue of different accents of speakers, it is argued that multimodal construction grammar should investigate all modes of meaningful communicative behavior but that this does not necessarily imply the postulation of multimodal constructions as such.

Blended Classic Joint Attention (BCJA) can deploy blends of form-meaning pairs across multiple modalities to suggest paths along which to construct meaning rather than to make assertions or convey information. An illustration is provided of suggestive landscapes, focusing on blended classic joint attention in the construal of an American college campus.