Language Use and Multimodal Communication - Prof. Dr. Cornelia Müller

Chair of Language Use and Multimodal Communication

We welcome you to study with us how gesture, language and audiovisual media work.

With the ring gesture Obama expresses the preciseness of the points he is making. The meaning of the gesture is an embodied meaning, it is derived from the practical action of picking up small objects. In our team, we investigate how gestures mean, how they are used with spoken language and how their perception is shaped by their orchestration in audiovisual media. Currently, we investigate how body movement and speech work together to express affective stance (multimodality of speaking) and how the audiovisual staging of those speakers creates an affective experience for the viewers (audiovisual multimodality). We study affective stance in German and Polish parliamentary debates. Moreover, we work on a textbook on Gesture and Language. This includes a cross-disciplinary account of how gestures work as a bodily mode of expression, the integration of gestures in multimodal utterances and multimodal interaction, an overview of the field of gesture studies and various methods of gesture analysis.

Obama Zeichnung Ringgeste

News

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Special Guest Lecture with Lynne Cameron visiting the ILS

In a special appearance the team around Cornelia Müller could win Prof. emerita and artist Dr. Lynne Cameron for a very personal and insightful talk on What still matters

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Workshop: Interaktion und Multimoedalität

After very insightful appearances as guest lecturers in our International Lecture Series hosted by the Viadrina Center for Gesture and Multimodality Studies the fruitful collaboration between Cornelia Müller’s Chair of Language Use and Multimodal Communication and Martin Luginbühl’s Chair of German Linguistics at the University of Basel continued in a two-day workshop organized by three of their doctoral students.

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Poster Students' conference

Upcoming students' conference

The Department of Language and Media Studies ends the semester with a highlight: a students’ conference of three seminars that takes place from 6th to 7th February at AM03. The presented topics cover questions on media and gesture studies as well as language and embodiment.

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Prof. Dr. Cornelia Müller

Secretary Office
Iris Franke
Auditorium maximum (AM)
Logenstraße 4
Room 133
+49 (0) 335 5534 2741
ifranke@europa-uni.de

Mailing Adress
Europa-Universität Viadrina
Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften
Große Scharrnstr. 59
15230 Frankfurt (Oder)

Professor of Language Use and Multimodal Communication

Cornelia Müller works on multimodal forms of language use, focusing on embodied, affective, and dynamic processes of meaning making in gestures and in audio-visual media. She has published on many facets of gesture as a medium of expression and on multimodal metaphor. She has investigated gestural mimesis, emergent proto-linguistic gestural forms (sedimentation, conventionalization) and developed Methods for Gesture, Film and Metaphor Analysis. Together with Adam Kendon she has launched and co-edited the international journal GESTURE and the book series GESTURE Studies (Benjamins) from 2000 to 2010. With Hermann Kappelhoff, she has developed a transdisciplinary (film studies and linguistic) approach to the experiential and affective dynamics of metaphorical meaning in speech, gestures, and audiovisual media.

Her most recent publications include:

Müller, C. (2024). A toolbox for methods of gesture analysis. In: Alan Cienki (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies, 182-216. Cambridge University Press.

Müller, C. (2024). Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking Metaphors: The Spectrum of Metaphor and the Multimodality of Discourse. In: Anders Örtenblad (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Metaphor in Organization Studies, 70-84. Oxford: Univ. Press.

Müller, C. (2024). Gestural mimesis as ‚as-if‘ action. In: Przemysław Zywiczynski, Johan Blomberg and Monika Boruta-Zywiczynska (eds.) Perspectives on Pantomime, 217-241. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Müller C. (2023). Language from the Body – Dynamic relations between gestures and signed language. In: Terry Janzen and Barbara Shaffer (eds.), Signed Language and Gesture Research in Cognitive Linguistics, XIII-XVI. De Gruyter Mouton.

Müller, C. (2022). Obituary, Adam Kendon 1934-2022. In: Gesture 21, 2/3, 157-166.

Cornelia Müller ZeM Springlecture2019

Team

Language Use and Multimodal Communication

Picture (from left to right): Teresa Weigand, Clara Kindler-Mathôt, Iris Franke, Jeanette-Christine Bauer, Jana Katharina Junge, Cornelia Müller

Team Sprachgebrauch und Multimodale Kommunikation

Research projects

Research Projects

Current and former projects.

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Teaching

Overview of current and past courses as well as an outlook for the coming semesters as soon as available.

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Dissertations

Current and former PhD theses as well as visiting international doctoral students

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Viadrina Center for Gesture and Multimodality Studies

Center for Linguistic Gesture and Multimodality Research

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