Visual Communication. Theoretical, Empirical, and Applied Perspectives

DFG Priority Programme 2329

ViCom investigates the special features and linguistic significance of visual communication. This comprises sign languages as fully developed natural languages which exclusively rely on the visual channel for communication, but also visual means that enhance spoken language such as gestures. It aims at disclosing the specific characteristics of the visual modality as a communication channel and its interaction with other channels (especially the auditory channel) to develop a comprehensive theoretical linguistic model of human communication and its cognitive foundations.

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For ViCom’s first phase (September 1, 2022 – August 31, 2025), the DFG has approved of 20 projects which investigate visual communication phenomena in 3 basic dimensions: (a) theoretical, (b) empirical, and (c) applied. All projects are organised in at least one of 6 project clusters corresponding to the different research objects relevant for ViCom: (1) gesture, (2) sign language, (3) visual studies, (4) animal communication, (5) didactic and clinical aspects and language acquisition, and (6) human-computer interaction systems.

Article about ViCom in the 02/2021 issue of the science magazine of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (in German)

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Presentations and posters from the DGfS-Workshop:
Visual Communication. New Theoretical and Empirical
Developments.

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Special session at NELS 53: Visual communication and sign languages

Special session at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 53)Location: University of GöttingenDate: January 12-14, 2023 Meeting description The 53rd Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 53) will be hosted by the University of Göttingen in Germany. For various reasons, no universities were available to host NELS this year in the US…

DGfS-Workshop on Ideophones and Lexical Iconicity (from Project FLESH)

Workshop at the 45th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) 2023 from the project “On the FLExibility and Stability of gesture-speecH coordination (FLESH): Evidence from production, comprehension, and imitation” Time: 8th—10th March 2023Location: University of Cologne Workshop description This workshop takes ideophones as a starting point to investigate lexicalized or conventionalized iconic forms in language from an interdisciplinary perspective.…

DGfS-Workshop on creativity and routine in linguistic feedback (from Project GeSi)

Workshop at the 45th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) 2023 from the project “Gestures or signs? Comparing manual and non-manual constructions sharing the same form in co-speech gesture and sign language: a corpus-driven approach. (GeSi)“ Time: 8th—10th March 2023Location: University of Cologne Workshop description Feedback is central to interaction. It is omnipresent in interpersonal communication and reflects interlocutors’…

First workshop of the ViCom data network

From July 18 to 20, 2022, the new ViCom data network met at the Bold Campus in the Taunus for its kickoff meeting. During the three days, members of different ViCom projects discussed the question of how sustainable and transparent data management can be organized in the area of multimodal data. The focus of this first meeting was on general issues related to data management such as copyright, sustainability, open access and ethics as well as on more practical issues…