Laura Hirrel

I regularly teach classes that place special emphasis on the study of language meaning, including semantics and pragmatics (LING 408), cognitive linguistics (LING 503), sociolinguistics (LING 441 and 541), and language and the law (LING 310). I also have taught the introductory course on linguistic analysis (LING 300).

My research explores the meaningful integration of gesture and speech and aims to expand cognitive linguistic frameworks to better account for the multimodal nature of language. I am particularly interested in multimodality and intersubjectivity in language use (e.g., stancetaking, joint action, directing attention). An emerging secondary research interest of mine is in perceptual dialectology. I am currently working on a project that studies how residents of Los Angeles understand English language variation in Los Angeles County.