Propose a tweet from @redhenlab

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Red Hen tweets! See http://twitter.com/redhenlab. Her tweets are dedicated to the study of multimodal constructions. Constructions can be expressions or templates for expressions, gestures, graphs, music, symbols, or any form—any perceptible pattern—that is paired with a meaning. To know a communicative system is to know a relational network of form-meaning pairs and how they can combine. Research on linguistic or multimodal constructions often begins when a researcher notices an interesting pattern that has not been explained. It can take years for that early attention to data to result in a publication. Red Hen's tweets are a way for researchers into multimodal constructions to generate group attention in the early stages of attention to a particular kind of data. Are there other researchers interested in the pattern on which you are working? To find out, tweet an example, with a little explanation of the research question. (The great linguist Jim McCawley used to show up at conferences in the 1970s and 1980s with mimeographed packets called "The Linguistic Flea Circus," listing hundreds of interesting examples in need of explanation. Red Hen's tweeting is inspired by his practice.) Some of Red Hen's earliest tweets were examples of the XYZ construction, like "Gatsby is the Hamlet of America" or "#FrankSinatra was the @JustinBieber of the day." (See http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1416433 for the analysis of the construction, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2168035 for its extension to multimodal examples). Red Hen's tweets include a link to a citation server carrying the audiovisual clip showing the actual multimodal performance of the expression. Have you found an interesting construction? Propose examples for @redhenlab to tweet! Note that by submitting this form, you give Red Hen the right to use the information you provide.

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