The second floor of the Urban Life building swarmed with passionate communication researchers, Friday afternoon.
As part of the Language and Literacy Initiative Project, undergraduate fellows gathered there to present their research on child speech development thus far.
“The Language and Literacy Initiative encourages research in areas related to language, reading and communication of all ages,” Said Bianca Harrison, one of the fellows. “This is everyone’s research at this time.”
Harrison, along with all of the other undergraduate fellows, are still in the process of doing research for their theses.
Aside from the presentations, there was also a lecture held by Dr. Susan Goldin- Meadow, a professor from the University of Chicago. She gave a speech on “Gesture’s Role in Creating and Learning Language,” and all of the students were so eager to hear her speak.
The ultimate goal of Goldin-Meadow’s speech was to argue that hand gestures are an actual language within themselves.
“Gesture when it accompanies speech is a part of language,” Goldin-Meadow said. “Gestures when used instead of speech, is language.”
