Monash Linguistics Seminars - Semester 2, 2011
Tuesdays, 11.00am-1.00pm
Room 245, Building 6 (Education)
Followed by lunch & coffee in the Staff Club
(You can also bring your own food to the club)
All welcome!
2 August: Special Honours seminar
Presentations by Monash Linguistics Honours students
9 August: Adam Schembri (Latrobe University)
Sociolinguistic variation and change in sign languages
30 August: Melanie Burns (Monash University)
A multimodal discourse analysis of Australian lifestyle magazine covers
13 September: Henriette Daudey & Paul Hastie (Latrobe University)
How to do things with little words in Pumi and Tikhak
11 October: Kirsten Ellis & Louisa Willoughby (Monash University)
Acquiring physical skills: exploiting games technology to teach sign language
18 October: Catherine Cook (Monash University) (Confirmation talk)
Building Fantasy and Reality: The Language of Complex World Systems
Abstracts
August 2, 2011 - Special Honours seminar (Monash University)
In this special seminar, Monash Linguistics Honours students will discuss their projects with staff, students and the general public.
August 9, 2011 - Adam Schembri (Latrobe University)
Sociolinguistic variation and change in sign languages
In this paper, I describe sociolinguistic variation and change in sign languages (with a focus on Australian Sign Language - Auslan, and British Sign Language – BSL) in phonology, lexicon and syntax. It has been a long-standing observation that there is considerable variation in the use of most well-documented sign languages (e.g. Stokoe, Casterline & Croneberg 1965). Factors that drive sociolinguistic variation and change in both spoken and signed language communities appear to be broadly similar. Social factors include, for example, a signer’s age group, region of origin, gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic status (e.g., Lucas, Valli & Bayley 2001; Schembri et al. 2010). Linguistic factors include phonological processes such as assimilation and reduction (Schembri et al. 2009), and grammaticalization (Johnston & Schembri 2010). It should be noted, however, some factors involved in sociolinguistic variation in sign languages are distinctive. For example, phonological variation includes features - such as whether a sign is produced with one or two articulators - that have no direct parallel in spoken language phonology. In addition, deaf signing communities are invariably minority communities embedded within larger majority communities whose languages are in another entirely different modality. Some of the linguistic outcomes of this contact situation (such as the use of individual signs for letters to spell out written words on the hands, known as finger spelling) are unique to such communities (Lucas & Valli 1992). This picture is further complicated by patterns of language transmission which see many deaf individuals acquiring sign languages as first languages at a much later age than hearing individuals (Emmorey 2002).
August 30, 2011 - Melanie Burns (Monash University)
A multimodal discourse analysis of Australian lifestyle magazine covers
The magazine cover is a complex semiotic system, comprising a range of visual and linguistic symbols, including words, colours, fonts, and images. These symbols are not neutral but may express ideological positions (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006 [1996]: 12-13), with particular images and linguistic messages selected by magazine producers not only to attract consumers but also to reflect the worldview of the publication. While this genre is omnipresent and rich with unique multimodal and persuasive features (Held, 2005: 173), the use of magazine covers as the subject of linguistic analysis has been relatively limited. This presentation explores the multimodal features of various Australian-produced lifestyle magazine covers, with a particular focus on how the meaning of linguistic elements is shaped by visual components of the cover. Using a discourse analytic framework, the indexical and ideological features of this genre are examined.
References
Held, G. (2005). Magazine Covers - A Multimodal Pretext-Genre. Folia Linguistica, 39(1/2), 173-196.
Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006 [1996]). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
September 13, 2011 - Henriette Daudey & Paul Hastie (Latrobe University)
How to do things with little words in Pumi and Tikhak
Wierzbicka (1986:531) gives an overview of key approaches used in the analysis of linguistic particles, emphasizing the challenges facing a semantic analysis, and acknowledging the Lockian-Leibnitzian philosophical tradition. The latter tradition, according to Wierzbicka, has framed much subsequent thinking in this area of linguistics. Ameka (1991:143) in his analysis of certain particles in Ewe, challenges the idea that a particle is a purely functional element with no meaning, an issue he elaborated on further in a recent seminar paper (Ameka 2011).
One approach which has not been widely employed in the analysis of pragmatic particles is that which uses visual representation. Possibly the most widely known description of grammatical structures by means of images is the symbolic notation system developed by Langacker (1991) as part of a cognitive approach to linguistic description. Another application of imagery to grammar has been the use of representational images of participants and processes in grammatical structures, such as in elicitation material developed by linguists for fieldwork. Some examples of these are the various videos and cartoon images developed as resources for the Max Plank Institute of Psycholinguistics. See, for example Hellwig & Lüpke( 2001) and Bowerman & Pederson (1992).
In this paper we want to focus on a subset of particles that especially deal with conversational contexts in two Tibeto-Burman languages. As well as describing the uses and structures of these particles, we aim to produce accompanying interpretations using both Langacker’s symbolic notation, and simple representational images.
The reason for generating these images is in order to further understand the cognitive and contextual basis of pragmatic meaning in particles. In the words of Langacker: ‘If we succeed in identifying and describing the domain or complex matrix invoked by a linguistic predication, we have not yet finished its characterization. Equally significant for semantic structure is the “conventional imagery” inherent in the meaning of an expression…I refer to our manifest capacity to structure or construe the content of a domain in alternate ways. This multi-faceted ability is far too often neglected in semantic studies’ (Langacker 1991:5)
We will present recent data from two Tibeto-Burman languages: Pumi (Qiangic) and Tikhak (Sal).
References
Ameka, Felix 1991. How discourse particles mean: the case of the Ewe “terminal” particles. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics v12 (143-170)
Ameka, Felix 2011. How to do things with ‘little words’ [RCLT ‘Troublesome Pragmatic Particles’ seminar series]
Bowerman, Melissa & Pederson, Eric. 1992. Topological relations picture series. In Stephen C. Levinson (ed.), Space stimuli kit 1.2: November 1992, 51. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
Hellwig, Birgit & Lüpke, Friederike. 2001. Caused positions. In Stephen C. Levinson & N.J. Enfield (eds.), Manual for the field season 2001, 126-128. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
Langacker, Ronald W. 1991 Concept, Image and Symbol Mouton de Grutyer Berlin, New York
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1986. Introduction. Journal of Pragmatics 10:5 (519-534)
October 11, 2011 - Kirsten Ellis & Louisa Willoughby (Monash University)
Acquiring physical skills: exploiting games technology to teach sign language
In this seminar we introduce our recently funded ARC Linkage Project, which will develop a game for the Xbox Kinnect which teaches basic Auslan vocabulary. The Linkage is held in conjunction with our colleagues Assoc Prof Julie Fisher (IT) and Assoc Prof Nicole Reinhart (Medicine), with Deaf Children Australia and Vicdeaf as partner organisations.
This project is innovative because the motion sensor of the kinnect will allow the game to give feedback to the user about whether a sign has been produced correctly. In this seminar, we explore some of the important early questions facing the project, including scoping resources already available for Auslan teaching and issues in selecting signs for inclusion and sign segmentation for the motion sensor.
October 18, 2011 - Catherine Cook (Monash University) (Confirmation talk)
Building Fantasy and Reality: The Language of Complex World SystemsIn any conversation, a world is built. Whether it is a version of reality or something imaginary, a complex series of mental spaces is created between the participants, culminating into a final, shared vision of the created world. In this study, I will look at this world creating process in the context of roleplaying games, where the game itself relies on a group of people sharing the same- or at least very similar- world view in a created fictional world, as well as the world of the game and of reality itself.
So far, no one discipline has come up with a framework of exploring or explaining this phenomena. By using data collected during typical roleplaying sessions, I hope to not only correct this oversight, but to also shed light on how worlds are created, shared and manipulated in groups through language. In this talk, I will focus on the preliminaries of my research. I will explain my ultimate research goals, introduce the subculture and outline some of my findings, including a newly devised framework for mapping multiple world interactions.