This project of the Language & Cognition department investigates language in its primordial context – face-to-face conversational interaction – the context in which language is learnt, and predominantly used. Work in the project focuses on the idea that there are strong constraints and special faculties underlying interactional uses of language, including principles of mutual orientation, coordination, turn-taking, information tracking and timing.

Methods

To deliver data and theory about the primary matrix of language use – both sociocultural and psychological – we combine methods and insights of multiple disciplines: linguistics, sociology, anthropology, psychology and neuroscience.

• Corpus analysis of natural interaction from diverse, unrelated cultures
• Critical case studies: e.g. home-sign, comparison of contrasting cultural systems
• Controlled comparison of interaction in lab conditions
• Study of infant-caretaker interaction
• Experimental work, for example with reaction time measures
• Neuroimaging of multimodal integration, 'projection', goal attribution

Subprojects

The IFL subprojects study perception words in interaction, the turn-taking system, and questions and responses.

Contributing research groups