Dr. Jack Wilson

School of Arts and Media

Photo of Dr. Jack Wilson

Contact Details

Crescent House 204

Please email for an appointment.

BIOGRAPHY

  • BA in English Language and Linguistics from York St John
  • MA in Pragmatics from University College London
  • PhD from the University of Leeds, department of Linguistics and Phonetics

Areas of research

Pragmatics, Gesture, Dementia, Language, Experimental

Teaching

I teach on modules focussing predominantly on meaning in language. I am currently teaching on the following modules:

Level 4

  • Foundations of Language II: Semantics and Pragmatics
  • Researching English Language
Level 5
  • Corpus Approaches to Language
  • Truth and Meaning
Level 6
  • Language and Communication
  • Current Issues in Pragmatics

Research Interests

Generally speaking, my research attempts to address the following question: What is meaning in language and how does it differ from meaning we find elsewhere?

Particularly, I research co-speech gestures, which are meaning gestures that accompany language use. In addressing this question, I adopt a variety of experimental and observational methods.

I am currently working on a variety of research projects, including: Gesture in speech production and comprehension, (rural) Sign Languages, the evolution of sign systems, metaphor in contemporary song lyrics, and gesture in modern South Arabian Languages.