Units

LaDisco : Center of research in linguistics

This Center groups linguists representing the main trends in contemporary linguistics. Research conducted within the Center is organised around four main axes: Language & Cognition, Morphology & Syntaxe, Semantics & Pragmatics and Sociolinguistics & Discours analysis.The first axis, Language & Cognition, highlights the cognitive correlate of linguistic phenomena, using empirical methods from cognitive sciences and experimental and clinical psychology. The Semantics and Pragmatics axis focuses on the interface between conventional meaning and its use in contexte, in close interaction with philosophy of language and mind, but also informed by experimental studies. The Morphology and Syntax axis encourages an in-depth study of linguistic structures, with approaches ranging from French linguistics to Chomskian generatistivism, and including cognitive linguistics. The last axis, Sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis, studies language in its context of social use and is based on the analysis of corpora as well as on methods derived from sociology or ethnography.

Modern and Contemporary Worlds

The RU Modern and Contemporary Worlds constitutes a research center dedicated to the study of modern and contemporary societies from the 19th Century onwards. It brings together researchers in History and History of Art willing to engage their investigation in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. The spatial focus of the RU goes well beyond the realms of Europe and aims at touching ground with colonial and postcolonial societies. Among its manifold research axes we should point out transnational social history, gender history, the history of art and artistic movements, business history, the circulation of knowledge and scientific practices, urban and environment studies, the mechanisms of mass communication and consumption, and the interactions between States, Law, and conflicts. A special emphasis is laid on interartistic comparatism allowing to cross-analyse the various forms of artistic expressions without preconceived theoretical borders.

Projetcs

Kalamu na wino: The Legacy of Arabic Script in Congo

As a result of contacts with Muslim merchants from the Swahili coast and Sudan in the second half of the 19th century, Arabic script was circulating in certain regions of the Congo (Maniema, Kisangani, Uele, etc.) even before the arrival of Europeans, and continued to do so throughout the colonial period, giving rise to a varied corpus in Arabic and Swahili in Arabic characters: correspondence, contracts, amulets, political treaties, books, etc. The aim of this project is to identify new documents that have remained in situ, to better understand their evolution over time and their circulation circuit, and to propose a linguistic analysis of Swahili documents in Arabic script produced in the Congo at the end of the 19th century.