Location: University of Göttingen
Date: February 13 – 14, 2025
Participating ViCom Projects:
- Lying, Deceiving and Misleading: Are we Committed to our Gestures (Mailin Antomo, Yuqiu Chen)
- Processes of Stabilization in Gestures. A Media-specific and Cross-modal Approach (Silva Ladewig)
- Parts of Speech and Iconicity in DGS (Thomas Finkbeiner, Nina-Kristin Meister, Markus Steinbach, Patrick Trettenbrein)
The ViCom project workshop Dimensions of Iconicity in the Visual Modality was held from February 13 to 14 at the Emmy-Noether-Saal, Alte Mensa, University of Göttingen. Despite the cold temperatures and snowfall, the workshop welcomed over 70 participants from more than 10 countries and three different continents: Germany, the UK, Belgium, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Uruguay, and other countries.
The workshop featured 2 keynote presentations, 17 on-stage presentations and 5 poster presentations. The 24 presentations discussed a wide range of topics related to the role of iconicity in visual communication. The topics included the impact of iconicity at various levels – lexical, grammatical, discourse-functional, and the at-issue status of iconic enrichments – as well as the iconic potential of different manual and nonmanual articulators, strategies for representing diverse concepts, and the perception of iconicity across different modalities, among others. Throughout the entire workshop, all presentations were interpreted between English, German Sign Language (DGS) and British Sign Language (BSL), ensuring accessibility for all participants.
See program: https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/program/688704.html
The workshop began informally with a preconference dinner on the evening before the workshop. On February 13, the official program commenced with a brief introduction given by the three participating ViCom projects. The scientific program started with the talk by the first invited speaker Gerardo Ortega (University of Birmingham), with the title Bodily Actions as a Starting Point: Evidence from Sign and Gesture, followed by 9 on-stage presentations covering different topics related to gestures, the sign-gesture interface and written languages. The poster session took place in the afternoon of the first day. The day concluded with a conference dinner, offering participants an opportunity for further discussions and networking.
The second day was opened by the invited presenter Simon Kollien (University of Hamburg) with his keynote presentation on Constructed Action and Constructed Dialogue from the Teachers Perspective, followed by 8 on-stage presentations focusing on iconicity in sign languages. The presentations on Day 2 covered a wide range of different topics and different sign languages, including German Sign Language (DGS), British Sign Language (BSL), Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT), Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL), and French Belgian Sign Language (LSFB), among others.
The workshop concluded with a short closing session, followed by a farewell coffee, allowing participants to continue the discussions after the presentations and exchange final thoughts. The feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive.
We thank Göttingen University for providing excellent facilities, and all interpreters and participants for their valuable contributions and engagement.