Professor Bodo Winter

Department of Linguistics and Communication
Professor of Linguistics

Contact details

Email: b.winter@bham.ac.uk
Twitter: @BodoWinter

Address: Frankland Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

I am a Professor of Linguistics and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. My research uses data science-driven linguistics to study multimodal communication, including iconicity, gesture and metaphor. For my Future Leaders Fellowship, I investigate how people communicate numerical information across different communication channels.

Qualifications

UKRI Future Leaders Fellow
Editor-in-Chief, Language & Cognition (Cambridge University Press)
PhD in Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California, Merced
MA in General Linguistics, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Biography

I began working at the University of Birmingham in 2016. I received an MA in General Linguistics from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and a PhD in Cognitive and Information Sciences from the University of California, Merced. I also worked as a doctoral fellow and research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig.

Teaching

I teach a range of BA and MA modules, including Language and the Mind, Psycholinguistics, Language and the Senses, Lexical Semantics and Applied Statistics for Linguists.

Postgraduate supervision

Dr Winter is interested in supervising PhD research in the areas of:

Numerical cognition
Iconicity and gesture
Sensory language
Language evolution
Metaphor

Find out more - our PhD English Language and Applied Linguistics page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

For my work, I use data-science driven linguistics to study the intersection of language and cognition. My book Sensory Linguistics (John Benjamins) is an in-depth analysis of English sensory adjectives — how people talk about colors, tastes, smells, and other sensory impressions. For my Future Leaders Fellowship (starting 2021), I will investigate the multimodal communication of numerical information — how people talk about numbers and use graphs and gesture to drive data-driven decisions. A unifying theme across my work is a strong commitment to open science and reproducible research practices. I’ve also written an introductory textbook on statistical modeling, Statistics for Linguists (Routledge).

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Winter, B & Strik Lievers, F 2025, Linguistic Synaesthesia: A Meta-analysis. Elements in Cognitive Linguistics, Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009519182

Article

Hodge, G, Winter, B, Schembri, A & Cormier, K 2025, 'BSL signers combine different semiotic strategies to negate clauses', Open Linguistics, vol. 11, no. 1, 20250063. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2025-0063

Fini, C, Era, V, Cuomo, G, Falcinelli, I, Gervasi, MA, Candidi, M, Mazzuca, C, Liuzza, MT, Winter, B & Borghi, AM 2025, 'Digital Connection, Real Bonding: Brief Online Chats Boost Interpersonal Closeness regardless of the conversational topic', Heliyon, vol. 11, no. 8, e42526. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2025.e42526

Lorson, A, Macuch Silva, V, Hart, C & Winter, B 2025, 'Gesture Size Affects Numerical Estimates in Quantifier Comprehension', Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 391-424. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001372

Wilding, E, Winter, B, Littlemore, J & Perlman, M 2025, 'Iconic Words Are Associated With Iconic Gestures', Cognitive Science, vol. 49, no. 8, e70098. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70098

Hodge, G, Manrique, E, Winter, B & Cormier, K 2025, 'Manual wh -signs and English wh- mouthings differentiate BSL content and polar questions', Linguistics, vol. 63, no. 5, pp. 1339-1381. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2023-0238

Villani, C, De Muynck, G, Borghi, AM, Lugli, L & Winter, B 2025, 'Open hands, large numbers: manual gestures influence random number generation', Psychological Research, vol. 89, no. 2, 55. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-025-02085-5

Grieve, J, Bartl, S, Fuoli, M, Grafmiller, J, Huang, W, Napolitano Jawerbaum, A, Murakami, A, Perlman, M, Roemling, D & Winter, B 2025, 'The sociolinguistic foundations of language modeling', Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 7, 1472411. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2024.1472411

Roemling, D, Winter, B & Grieve, J 2025, 'Visualizing map data for linguistics using ggplot2: A tutorial with examples from dialectology and typology', Journal of Linguistic Geography, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 69-83. https://doi.org/10.1017/jlg.2024.11

Woodin, G & Winter, B 2024, 'Numbers in Context: Cardinals, Ordinals, and Nominals in American English', Cognitive Science, vol. 48, no. 6, e13471. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13471

Macuch Silva, V, Lorson, A, Franke, M, Cummins, C & Winter, B 2024, 'Strategic use of English quantifiers in the reporting of quantitative information', Discourse Processes, vol. 61, no. 10, pp. 498-523. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2024.2413311

Comment/debate

Perlman, M & Winter, B 2026, 'In search of meaning: The origins of language are not found in the bouba-kiki effect', Science, vol. 391, no. 6787, pp. 762-763. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aee8641

Sóskuthy, M, Dingemanse, M, Winter, B & Perlman, M 2025, 'Reply to: Not just the alveolar trill, but all "r-like" sounds are associated with roughness across languages, pointing to a more general link between sound and touch', Scientific Reports, vol. 15, 12930. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-94854-w

Review article

Winter, B 2025, 'The size and shape of sound: The role of articulation and acoustics in iconicity and crossmodal correspondences', The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 157, no. 4, pp. 2636–2656. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0036362

Grieve, J, Bartl, S, Fuoli, M, Grafmiller, J, Huang, W, Jawerbaum, A, Murakami, A, Perlman, M, Roemling, D & Winter, B 2025, 'The sociolinguistic foundations of language modeling', Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 7, 1472411. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2024.1472411

View all publications in research portal