Multimodality in Language Acquisition
| Number: | P74 |
| Organizer: | Straehle, Petra |
| Co-Organizer: | Friederike Kern |
| Abstract: | |
| Even though it is increasingly acknowledged that communication is multimodal, language acquisition research still largely focusses on verbal language. However, some studies demonstrate the relevance of prosodic and nonverbal resources in adult-child interaction (cf. e.g. Goldin-Meadow 2009, Wells & Corrin 2004, Straehle in prep.). Many studies on the role of nonverbal communication use mainly quantitative experimental research methods, and focus on topics such as gesture and cognition (Cook & Goldin-Meadow 2006), or the role of gesture in the acquisition of grammatical skills (Ozcaliskan & Goldin-Meadow 2006 a), or of the lexicon (Ozcaliskan & Goldin-Meadow 2006 b; Vogt 2001). Little is known about the use and development of nonverbal, paraverbal and verbal communicative means as interactive resources in language acquisition. By use of conversation analytical methodology, the focus is shifted to the role of different modalities in the process of development within naturally occurring conversations. The panel will focus on two sets of related questions concerning multimodal language acquisition: – the use of nonverbal/paraverbal communication as a resource for children in interaction: do children/learners of a second language use nonverbal/paraverbal resources as compensation strategies? What are the preverbal resources of language acquisition? – the use of nonverbal/paraverbal communication as a resource for adults in child-adult interaction: do adults use gesture/prosody in interaction with children as part of their adaptive and supportive behaviour? It is the aim of the panel to bring together researchers on first and second language acquisition with conversation analytical background to address the question of how nonverbal and paraverbal means are used as a discourse-related resource in the acquisition of linguistic competences. |
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