Research
My research focuses on the interrelationship of language, cognition and culture in the realm of public language use (research on spoken language, discourse and corpus linguistics). In the field of cognitive semantics and construction grammar, my research relates to questions such as: How does meaning of different complexity (morphems, complex words, frozen phrases) emerge in our mind? And how is this 'linguistic' knowledge represented and stored in our mind and memory? In order to take account of different language usages in public domains a closely intertwined theory and application of linguistic discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics and construction grammar turned out to be fruitful. Here, my research interest covers both knowledge representation through frames and different kinds of conceptual integration (metaphor, metonymy, synedoche etc.). Recently, my work concentrates on text and cogntive-linguistic issues in the realm of connectivity in texts, particularly associative anaphora.
The main part of my studies is rooted in the paradigm of construction grammar, Cognitive Grammar and historical semantics. My paper Kognitive Linguistik heute (pdf) ("Cognitive Linguistics today") may serve as a first starting point to get acquainted with the main positions and concepts of Cognitive Linguistics. It also entails useful bibliographical information as well as a list of relevant journals, book series and websites.
I. Current projects
Research Network "Construction Grammar of German"
On the conference “Construction Grammar: New Perspectives in the Study of German and English“ held in Kiel in February 2010, I have founded together with Alexander Lasch the research network “Construction Grammar of German”. As a follow-up event I have organized a panel on “Constructions in German” at the 4th conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association in October 2010, and a third meeting will take place in July 2011 in Düsseldorf, where the conference “Constructions as social conventions and cognitive routines” will be hosted.
The long-term aim is to empirically identify and analyze as comprehensively as possible a repertoire of constructions specific for contemporary standard German. It is also a major goal to establish the the research network "Construction Grammar of German" as a solid platform for international long-term collaborations between linguists working in the field of German linguistics. For more details see Arbeitskreis "Konstruktionsgrammatik des Deutschen".
Connectivity in texts: the case of associative anaphora (in cooperation with FrameNet, International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley)
Within the framework of this project several empirical studies on associative anaphora are conducted. Concentrating on the resolving process of associative anaphora, the studies try to gain empirical evidence of the involved representational and procedural aspects. By integrating findings of both experiential and corpus-based studies the project aims at developing a cognitive-linguistic theory (within the realm of construction grammar and frame semantics) of domain-bound reference. Overall, it addresses four issues:
- In how far does the nature of associative anaphora differ from the nature of other anaphora types (such as direct pronominal or direct complex anaphora)?
- Is there empirical evidence for the hypothesis that both semantic and conceptual information have different impacts on the conceptualization process?
- Supposing that frequency, conventionality and prototypicality of anaphoric referential relations give rise to different degrees of entrenchment, what role does cognitive salience play in setting up the relations?
- Which cognitive principles and operations guide the conceptualization process?
Instead of relying on introspection, the research project adopts the view that converging evidence is necessary in order to gain reliable findings (cf. Langacker 2008: 85). The working hypotheses are: (i) With respect to representational aspects, the conceptualization of associative anaphora is generally motivated by schema-based processes (Fillmore 1985, Ziem 2008, Busse 2012); (ii) with respect to procedural aspects, the conceptualization can be adequately explained by means of frame integration and conceptual blending, that is, composition, completion, and elaboration (Fauconnier/Turner 1998). In this view, it is thus neither necessary nor psychologically realistic to presume different cognitive schemas and mechanisms.
DFG-funded research project on Constructions of crises in Germany (as part of the network Language and knowledge)
Together with Prof. Dr. Martin Wengeler (Trier) I am in charge of a DFG-funded project on the linguistic constructions of social crises in Germany. The aim of the corpus-based project is to show how economical and social-political crises are linguistically construed and perpetuated in Germany since 1973. The project is designed as a large-scale corpus study addressing about 11,000 parsed texts. The corpus is investigated in quantitative terms by means of the IMS CorpusWorkbench and a MySQL databank with PHP webinterface that allows for multifactorial annotations.
With the help of a historical corpus analysis covering relevant texts of different genres from 1972 until 2009, we try to illuminate different construal operations and concepts fluctuating at a certain time and changing over time.
Together with Martin Wengeler (Düsseldorf) I am in charge of the Domain History - Politics - Society which is an integral part of the project Language and knowledge: problems of public and professional communication.
II. Former projects
DFG-funded research project on Methods and methodologies of discourse analysis (2008-2010/11)
From 2008 until 20010/11, 2007, I have been the principial investigator - together with Johannes Angermüller (sociology, Magdeburg) and Martin Nonhoff (political sciences, Bremen) - of the DFG-funded research network on Methods and Methodologies of Discourse Analysis. In this project, discourse analysts from different scientific backgrounds regularly meet and met in order to bring together the multifarious disciplines (such as sociology, linguistics, political studies, education, literary studies etc.) involved in the the field of discourse analysis.
In the context of this project, we are currently working on a Dictionary of interdisciplinary discourse studies covering approximately 700 lemmata from different domains including poststructuralism, frame semantics, speech act theory, hegemony theory, Critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication. Furthermore, it is planned to publish a Handbook Methods of Discourse Analysis dealing with recent tendencies and discourse analytical approaches. The handbook aims at developing an integrative discourse analytical model; its field of application is the university reform debate.
Interdisciplinary research project Sensory Semantics and the Semantics of Taste
Until 12/2008 I worked together with Prof. Dr. Heike Behrens (Basel) in a project on Cognition and Sensory Semantics which is an integral part of the interdisciplinary research project Sensory and the Semantics of Taste. Bringing together different methods and knowledge resources from linguistics, food science and cognitive science, we try to examine exhaustively the German lexicon of taste terms. Since April 2008 the project is funded by Gebert Rüf.
Our cognitive sub-project concentrates on the question which linguistic and cognitive mechanisms help to conceptualize and verbalize taste sensations. Considering that there are only a few genuine taste terms, namely bitter, sour, salty, and sweet, we try to find out how the countless taste sensations that we are used to come across day in day out are linguistically expressed and communicated. In a cognitive-semantic approach, at least three dimensions need to be distinguished: (i) historical and (ii) conventional aspects of meaning construction as well as (iii) metaphorical and metonymical mechanisms of meaning construction. Along these dimensions, several corpus studies were carried out, on the one hand on the basis on historical corpora, on the other hand on the basis of the data collection COSMAS II, a corpus that the "Institut für deutsche Sprache" provides.