Dr. Elise Stickles

Biography

Elise Stickles studies spoken signed language perspectives within cognitive semantics and contemporary linguistics. Her research lies at the intersection of conceptual metaphor theory and embodied construction grammar, with a focus on syntax and lexical semantics. She particularly investigates multimodal metaphoric constructions, which involve both linguistic and gestural content, as well as how interaction and spatial perception influence language. Stickles employs a variety of research methodologies, including experimental and computational techniques, alongside corpus-based approaches. Key projects include MetaNet, a large-scale analysis initiative aimed at identifying and analyzing metaphoric language across extensive text corpora, and the development of Multimodal Embodied Construction Grammar, which provides a theoretical framework for integrating gestures and non-verbal communicative cues into the representation of linguistic form and meaning. Her work contributes significantly to understanding how spatial relationships and events are construals of thought in language usage.

Research Interests