Social mind and grammar

The group aims at a better understanding of language as a product as well as a constitutive part of human intersubjectivity. Language evolves in social interaction both phylo- and ontogenetically, language and grammar are thus inherently social. Social interaction is also the niche where images of self and others arise: children learn the basis for these notions and the means for negotiating these images later in life simultaneously as language developes. The group thus approaches language at the interface of the human mind and the social world, its methodological and theoretical framework consisting of conversation analysis and cognitive linguistics. Its research interests focus on the action-oriented, bodily and affective foundations of grammar. More specific areas of interest are the dynamic organization of (inter)subjectivities in interaction and the resources that grammar offers for this, the relation of music, body and language, and metatheory of linguistics and semiotics. Since human intersubjectivity has been a topic of recent interest also in other fields related to linguistics (e.g. psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, and, particularly, the enactivist theory that combines all these three), the group aims at an interdisciplinary dialogue.