Methods for studying dialogue

Language doesn’t exist in isolation – it is created, negotiated, and understood through dialogue. In Methods for Studying Dialogue, you gain the tools to explore how people interact through language and why dialogue is essential for both language understanding and language learning.

The course introduces key concepts in dialogue research and shows how language can be studied in real time – in conversation, interaction, and collaboration. You will build a strong theoretical foundation while gaining hands-on experience with research methods.

During the course, you will:

understand the role of dialogue in human communication and language development

apply both qualitative and quantitative methods in dialogue research

learn when and how to use different approaches, including experimental methods, corpus analysis, and formal modeling

analyze dialogue in relation to specific research questions

critically reflect on the strengths and limitations of different research methods

Teaching combines lectures, labs, and seminars, with practical exercises that help you turn theory into analysis.

For students who want to understand language as interaction – and learn how conversations really work.

The purpose of the course is to find out about the basic interactive dimension of language use and structure and the specific conditions that apply when studying dialogue compared to those that apply in traditional linguistics.

Participants in the course will become familiar with a number of different ways of approaching scientific problems within dialogue research and with the possibilities and limitations of each method. The course will cover both human-human and human-machine interaction, as well as, language acquisition, animal communication, and the issues that arise as a result of current language technology developments.