Wilhelm von Humboldt Nachwuchspreis (prize for young scientists)
Published in , 2024
I was awarded the Wilhelm von Humboldt Nachwuchspreis (prize for young scientists) for my doctoral thesis entitled “Iconicity in Language and Speech”. Read the thesis here.
From the press release of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS):
While classical linguistics emphasizes the arbitrariness of human language, there is increased interest in the iconicity of signs, meaning their motivation by what they denote. In her dissertation, Aleksandra Ćwiek examines different aspects of iconicity using corpus linguistic and experimental methods at various linguistic levels: in texts of German children’s books that use onomatopoeic expressions; in the sound symbolism of the fantasy names of Pokémon characters; and in the interplay of pointing gestures in vertical space and the pitch of spoken language. Her work is very vivid and excitingly written. Beyond her dissertation, Aleksandra Ćwiek has, among other things, demonstrated iconicity in 28 languages as the lead author of a major study. This study has received a great deal of attention in international media. Her work deserves the Wilhelm von Humboldt Prize for creative research ideas, the rigorous methodological implementation of these ideas, precision in analysis, and her ability to inspire others for a controversial research field.