Research Units

Such a structure corresponds to our social and cognitive approach to linguistics on the one hand, and our desire to integrate fundamental and empirical research objectives on the other.

The PoliMod Lab is run by the prominent American cognitive linguist A.J. Cienki and researches multimodal communicative complexes (the way interactants integrate gestures with their speech). It also focuses on communication within various professional settings, e.g., debates between politicians, sales pitches by entrepreneurs, trials in courtrooms, etc.

Detailed micro-analysis of video-recorded interactions provides a starting point for interpretive analysis of processes of sense-making and sense-giving in situ.

Data on spontaneous gestures accompanying speech can be used in research on processes of thinking for speaking.

The Gender Laboratory approaches dicourse from a social perspective which implies the social identity of the speakers, i.e. gender, age, social roles, ethnocultural characteristics.

The Laboratory for the Study of Sign Languages focuses on sign language discourse. It conducts empirical research in collaboration with the Centre for Neurology to study the role of sign language use in bilinguals’ brain plasticity.

The research of the Centre and its labs is mainly theoretical and fundamental in nature, however some issues that we consider concern patterns of communicative behaviour in different discourse types and languages, including in sign language communication, which can be applicable to real-world problems.