Project on the Language-Art Interface: Vision and Voice - Rethinking Human Communication

Bakewell DUE 9455587 Brown University FY1995 $ 123,680 Providence, RI 02912 Course and Curriculum Psychology Title: Project on the Language-Art Interface The Project on the Language-Art Interface (PROLARTI) focuses on the development of a prototype of a CD ROM, with the title: The Origins of Communication, the first part of a three-part series titled: Vision and Voice: Rethinking Human Communication. Designed for use by undergraduates in introductory level courses (in both traditional and long-distance classroom and home settings), Vision and Voice aims to encourage the exploration of language within an interactive, multimedia, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural environment. It links together the methods, theories and data of anthropology, biology, cognitive science, linguistics, literature, neurology and the visual and performing arts. In both its prototype and future CD-ROM formats, The Origins of Communication focuses on three broad areas of language: (1) Evolution (2) Human Development, Language Acquisition, and Animal Communication; and (3) the Brain. All three areas of investigation include multidisciplinary material (theories, data, controversies) on visual and verbal aspects of communication. It is PROLARTI's first undertaking, which promises to provide a model for truly interdisciplinary research and teaching on language and to bridge the widening gap between the sciences and humanities. It plans to do so by redesigning scientific investigations of human communication to include the study of art alongside the study of language. When art is defined as 'visual representation,' its presence in all aspects of human communication (e.g., gesture) becomes apparent. Rather than simply emphasize similarities between language and art, PROLARTI's prototype for Origins of Communication will focus on their differences as well. Language, being primarily a symbolic system of signs, stands in contrast to iconically-based systems, such as art. The shift in emphasis as exemplified by PROLARTI's prototype of The Origins of Communication aims to not only broaden the study of language to include all communicative processes--nonverbal forms (glossed here as 'art') as well as verbal--but to expand the teaching of undergraduate courses on linguistics by incorporating multimedia and interactive material from the life and social sciences as well as the humanities.