15th International Cognitive Linguistics Conferenceでの院生の発表

8月6日から11日にかけて関西学院大学で行われた認知言語学に関する国際学会で発表を行った院生が記事を書いてくれました。彼は、日本人英語学習者と中国人英語学習者は移動についてどのように英語で表現するのか、それはどの程度英語的な移動の表し方であり、さらにどの程度自身の母語における移動の表し方に影響を受けているのか、というとても興味深いテーマに取り組んでいます。今回の国際学会での発表を通してたくさんのことを得たようでとてもうれしい限りです。どんどんと研究を進めていってくれたらと思います。

I had the honor to attend the 15^th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference held in Nishinomiya, Japan in August. It was an eye-opening, thought-provoking experience for me.

The conference this time was a five-day journey, longer than usual academic conferences. Cognitive linguists and young scholars, mainly from Europe, gathered together to present their edging research and give informative talks, which centered on cross-linguistic perspectives on cognitive linguistics, the theme of the conference. Apart from my presentation, I was a listener for most of the time but not a silent one. I was blown away by many of the interesting research going on in the field of cognitive linguistics. For example, a group of Ph.D. students from the University of Edinburgh presented their study of evolinguistics by employing VR. Evolinguistics is a newly born research area, which focuses on the evolutionary process of language. Using VR, they designed an experiment that showed the participants a fictitious world with different typography to test how people use directional deixis in line with different typography. Another very impressive study was from an authoritative gesture researcher, Sotaro Kita. He spent years studying the relationship between language and gesture. He reported his latest research about how left hand gestures can enhance metaphor explanations to offer the proof that gestures influence language in return as language influences gestures. The conference provided all the participants with a stage to exchange ideas and resources, so every day of the conference opened a new world for me. I really learned a lot by the end of the conference.

Fortunately, I was not only a listener but also a presenter. I gave my poster presentation on the second day of the conference. Standing in front of the board, I got asked a lot of questions, some of which were very challenging, totally out of my expectation. But these questions became the take-home messages for me to improve my research. Most excitingly, I had the chance to talk with a professor whom I have been citing in my own research. She gave me some useful resources to refer to in my future research. I was too elated to even express my gratitude, in hindsight though.

Lastly, I was also overwhelmed by the fact that cognitive linguistics is amazingly popular in Japan. Young Japanese cognitive linguists were very active and passionate. Some Russian scholars told me in the conference dinner that they heard cognitive linguistics is most thriving in Japan, so they decided to come to Japan for the conference all the way from Moscow.

As a novice researcher, there is a long way to go. But the experience this time has laid a good foundation for me to continue my research and encouraged me to think with multiple perspectives.