Speed at the Crossroads of Language, Perception and Action
About the project
Project KirKe – ‘Speed at the Crossroads of Language, Perception and Action’ – is a starting grant funded by the Estonian Research Council. We focus on the interplay between language and cognition and are interested in the extent to which, and how, language influences what we pay attention to and how we perceive the world around us, as well as how our experiences of the world, including what we see and hear, affect language use and structure.
To address these questions, we explore the language of speed in Estonian, combining corpus analysis with experimental research methods.
We study
- how speed is expressed in language,
- whether and how the language of speed influences behaviour, and
- whether and how the perception and experience of speed affect language use.
The project is grounded in embodiment approaches. One of the central questions is how much language can reveal about cognitive processes.
The project is funded by the Estonian Research Council (PSG929) and will conclude in 2028 (for further details, see ETIS). Previous phases of the project were supported by the Estonian Research Council (PSG671) and the research fund of Kadri, Nikolai and Gerda Rõuk.
Illustration by Navitrolla for the paper in Oma Keel (2022): ‘Kõigil on kiire – ka keeles!’ (Everyone is in a hurry – in language too!)
