Lydia Rodríguez

Linguistic Anthropology

Regional focus: Latin America, Mesoamerica, Mayan languages.

Topical interests: Language and Gesture, Language and Thought, Linguistic Relativity, Cross-cultural Studies in Cognitive Linguistics.

My interest in linguistic anthropology is related to both my formation as a philologist and as an anthropologist. I hold degrees in Classical Philology (2000) and in Social and Cultural Anthropology (2002). I have also conducted part of my graduate education in Spain, where I received an MA in Amerindian Studies (2005) from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

I entered the Ph.D. Program in Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Virginia in 2005. I first worked on the relationship between language and indigenous philosophies of personhood. I have also developed a strong interest in corporality and in the so-called "non verbal communication". In my current research I explore the relationship between language, gesture, and thought. I am particularly interested in co-speech gestures, and specifically in gestures that co-occur with temporal utterances. My research is about how different cultural ideas about time and different linguistic strategies for expressing temporal notions have an impact on gesture. At a theoretical level, I am also interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of linguistic relativity.