The aims of the project are the documentation and interdisciplinary analysis of phenomena related to interpersonal communication in the borderland region of Słubice (Poland) and Frankfurt Oder (Germany) – on the border of languages and cultures.
The main research focus is on paralinguistic phenomena (prosody, gestures) and accomodiation within the communication process together with the relevant communication strategies. The cities of Frankfurt Oder and Słubice constitute an investigation and testing ground for fieldwork analyses of an exceptionally close co-existence of cultures, languages, and social groups connected by their common history.
The project’s goals include: studies of linguistic and cultural awarness, the sense of identity, the awarness of language endangerment, the influences and changes affecting the language spoken by the local communities of Słubice and Frankfurt Oder, the studies of the dynamics of the processes of mutual accommodation (communicative convergence) of paralinguistic features in task-oriented dialogues, especially the prosody and gestures, as well as empirical studies dedicated to the realisation of selected categories of gestures used by Polish and German speakers.
