Jennifer Hinnell

In my dissertation research, I explored the ways that we make meaning with our bodies in face-to-face interactions. My research showed the tight connection between specific expressions in the speech signal and patterns in gestures and other meaningful body movements, such as head movements and shoulder shrugs. In my postdoctoral work with Dr. Barbara Dancygier at UBC, I apply this lens to post-truth discourse. I will explore linguistic patterns in speech and the body in a variety of media genres, focussing on how people assert, negate, and reject beliefs, all of which are central to the linguistic expression of stance and lie at the core of the post-truth phenomenon. By including the body as part of the linguistic signal and looking across a variety of genres, we hope to gain a fuller understanding of how speakers deploy different modalities and genres to build the stances that characterize the post-truth phenomena in public discourse.