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Communication and Expression

Revealing how humans convey ideas and emotions.
  • Sandie Okoro delivering a speech while standing at a lectern

    Studying the mastery and mystery of language and expression

    This area of our research focuses on understanding and analysing various forms of communication, including verbal, nonverbal, written, and visual, as well as the expression of ideas and emotions. Whether its tracing the etymology of sign language, modeling the intuitive building blocks of all linguistic learning, or developing training in rhetoric to help the public express their beliefs more clearly and persuasively, our research is rooted in practical application and the benefit to society.

  • A London Underground walkway with adverts on the walls.

    Professor Jeannette Littlemore’s work on the EMMA (Exploring Multimodal Metaphor in Advertising) project explores how companies need to develop sophisticated and effective marketing, with advertisements that capture people's attention and are emotionally engaging and persuasive. EMMA delves into how they can achieve these aims using verbal/visual metaphors and metonymy that pack a mass of information into a small space or simple representation, examining how they impact the speed of human understanding.

Professor Adam Schembri on "How is sign language?"

It is now more than 60 years since sign language linguistics emerged as a field of study within the language sciences. In this presentation, Professor Adam Schembri explores studies of Auslan and British Sign Language, all of which have attempted to build on the finding that sign languages are natural languages by asking the question: what kind of languages are they?

Meet our researchers

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  • Find a PhD

    We offer a variety of funded PhD projects from many research areas. Find out how.

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