| Omschrijving |
In this course we investigate the nature of the human language system by exploring its boundaries. Language may be defined, very broadly, as a system of signs by which we can transmit information. Written English, spoken Frisian, and signed ASL clearly fit this definition. But are gestures, facial expressions, emoji, gifs etc also (part of) a language? Drawings, paintings, photos, and diagrams are clearly meaningful, they can be used to communicate or even to tell stories, but does that mean there are ‘pictorial languages’? And to what extent is there a language of (instrumental) music, dance, film, or video games? In this course we’ll be using our theoretical and empirical linguistics toolkit, especially semantics and pragmatics, to explore to what extent all these phenomena are indeed language-like. In the course you’ll become acquainted with the emerging field of Super Linguistics, i.e., the application of linguistic theory to ‘non-standard objects’. Concretely, we’ll be reading and discussing a number of recent research papers about various Super Linguistics topics, ranging from the pragmatics of emoji, to the grammar of dance, the discourse structure of comics, and the semantics of music. |