AbstractThe meaning-making process in face-to-face interaction relies on the integration of meaningful information being conveyed by speech as well as the tone of voice, facial expressions, hand and head gestures, body postures and movements (McNeill 1992; Kendon 2004). Hence, it is inherently multimodal. Usage-based linguistics attributes language use a fundamental role in linguistic theorizing by positing that the language system is grounded in and abstracted from (multimodal) language use. However, despite this inherent epistemological link, usage-based linguists have hitherto conceptualized language as a system of interconnected verbal, i. e. monomodal units, leaving nonverbal usage aspects and the question of their potential entrenchment as part of language largely out of the picture.This is – at least at first sight – surprising because the usage-based model of Construction Grammar (C × G) seems particularly well-equipped to unite the natural interest of linguists in the units that define language systems with the multimodality of language use. Constructions are conceptualized as holistic “conventionalized clusters of features (syntactic, prosodic, pragmatic, semantic, textual, etc.) that recur as further indivisible associations between form and meaning” (Fried 2015: 974). Given its conceptual openess to all levels of usage features, several studies have recently argued for the need to open up the current focus of C × G towards kinesic recurrences (Günthner & Imo 2006; Deppermann 2011; Deppermann & Proske 2015; Andrén 2010; Schoonjans 2014; Schoonjans et al. 2015; Steen & Turner 2013; Zima 2014a; Zima 2014b, in press; Cienki 2012; Cienki 2015; Mittelberg 2014; Müller & Bressem 2014; Bergs 2015; Valenzuela 2015). Departing from the usage-based foundation of C × G which takes “grammar to be the cognitive organization of one’s experience with language” (Bybee 2006: 219), these studies suggest that the basic units of language, i. e. constructions, may be multimodal in nature.This paper presents some of the current issues for a Multimodal Construction Grammar. The aim is to frame the debate and to briefly summarize some of the discussion’s key issues. The individual papers in the special issue elaborate in more detail on particular points of discussion and/or present empirical case studies.
Multimodal language use in Savosavo
