ILS round 3 with a talk on gesture studies

In her brilliant talk on „Multifunctionality in gestural discourse markers“, Schuyler Laparle, PhD, made an important contribution to the studies of gesture. She demonstrated how gestural discourse markers, like lexical discourse markers, systematically fulfill various functions semantically as well as pragmatically. Using a case study of the lexical discourse markers „anyways“ and „however“ in conjunction with stopping and removal gestures, Schuyler Laparle illustrated how co-speech gestural discourse markers share basically the same characteristics as lexical discourse markers: they are polysemous, underspecified and multifunctional.

After the presentation, the exchange continued in a relaxed atmosphere with a dinner and further discussions the following day.

The complete program of the International Lecture Series (abstracts included) can be found on the site of the Viadrina Center for Gesture and Multimodality Studies (VCGMS).