Kursinformation

When we think of grammar, we often think of sentences with constituents such as verbs and nouns, which are bound together by strict rules. In the traditional view, grammar was understood as an abstract linguistic system which governs the way we use language. Rethinking the idea of grammar, usage-based approaches such as construction grammar and interactional linguistics take real-life language use as their starting point and work their way towards a description of how people actually speak. Construction grammarians see language as a network of conventionalized form-meaning pairings, i.e. constructions. Interactional linguists study how grammar both emerges in human interaction and creates a framework for social actions. Both approaches have also been applied in the study of textual genres, dialectal variation, language acquisition, multilingual and non-native speech as well as embodied actions (such as gaze, gestures and body movements).
This course introduces construction grammar and interactional linguistics in a series of lectures and workshops intended for PhD students, graduate students and researches in linguistics. It offers the participants insights to state-of-the-art research in usage-based linguistics as well as an opportunity to discuss their own work with some of the World’s leading researchers.