PD Dr. Silva H. Ladewig
I am a linguist at Georg-August-University Göttingen, where I am also a member of the Experimental Sign Lab.
Here, I explore how meaning becomes embodied and conventionalized in gestures, a question I pursue especially in my DFG project "Towards a Morphology of Recurrent Gestures," which is part of the priority program "Visual Communication: Theoretical, Empirical, and Applied Perspectives (ViCom)." In this project, I look at compositionality in recurrent gestures as they appear in informal conversations and in political communication.
What fascinates me most is the embodied nature of language and the way multimodal meaning emerges in the flow of interaction. I have been fortunate to explore these questions in a variety of interdisciplinary projects, approaching linguistic multimodality from a linguistic perspective in pragmatics, cognitive grammar, cognitive semantics, and sign language research.
A further research focus lies on the investigation of multimodal language in mediatized contexts such as political talk shows and video shorts.
Since 2021, I have been engaged in science communication, sharing my research through my social media channel GestikInsights and my blog.
Foto: Carmen Jasmyn Hoffmann
Scientific career
11/2025–11/2028 | Principal Investigator of the projcet "Towards a morphology of recurrent gestures" (German Resarch Foundation), Georg-August University Göttingen. | |
04/2025 | Habilitation on the topic "Dimensions of Gestural Recurrence: Forms, Meaning, and Stabilization" at the Georg-August University Goettingen, with venia legendi in German Linguistics. | |
09/2022–09/2025 | Principal Investigator of the projcet „Stabilization processes in gestures. A media-specific and cross-modal approach“ (German Resarch Foundation), Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. | Gepris |
2019–2024 | Co-Investigator of the project "Multimodal Stancetaking: Expressive Movement and Affective Stance. Political Debates in the German Bundestag and the PolishSejm’” (funded by “Beethoven”; German Research Foundation / NCN). | Gepris |
10/2016-09/2022 | Post-Doc at the Chair of Language Use and Multimodal Communication, European University Viadrina | |
10/2015-09/2016 | Substitute for the Professorship for Language Use and Multimodal Communication (W3), European University Viadrina. | |
02/2018-08/2022 | Head of the Viadrina Gesture Center | |
10/2011-09/2015 | Post-doc at the Chair of Language Use and Multimodal Communication, European University Viadrina. | |
10/2009-09/2011 | Post-doc and co-head of the sub-project "Meaning Emergence in Language and Gesture", joint project "Body Language of Movement and Dance: Meaning Emergence, Linguization and Therapeutic Use" (BMBF). | |
07/2012 | PhD with the thesis "Syntactic and semantic integration of gestures in language - structural, cognitive and conceptual aspects" at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), grade: summa cum laude. | |
08/2006-09/2010 | Research assistant in the interdisciplinary research project "Towards a grammar of gesture: Evolution, brain, and linguistic structures", funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. | |
07/2006 | Master's degree from the Free University of Berlin (English, General and German Linguistics). | |
04/2004-03/2006 | Tutor at the Chair of Psycholinguistics at the Free University of Berlin (Prof. Dr. Gisela Klann-Delius). | |
10/2001-07/2006 | Member of the FU Gesture Project. |