Professur für Linguistik des Englischen

Research on language use and learning during study abroad has primarily investigated students' use of the target language (TL) in a TL environment and the convergence of their TL skills towards a native speaker norm. To date, little is known about the multilingual practices that students engage in while studying abroad. From the perspective of multilingualism, contexts in which a local language is used, of which the students may have little or no previous knowledge, represents a fascinating case as students often heavily depend on English as a lingua franca (ELF) to interact with the host community and other international students. The present study aims to shed light on the role of ELF in mediating the learning of local languages in different ELF contexts. The goal is to investigate the extent to which ELF is employed in the foreign language classroom, by whom, under what circumstances and for what purposes. Additionally, the study aims at gaining a deeper understanding of course instructors' and students' attitudes toward the use of ELF in the foreign language classroom. Previous research on foreign language learning in the classroom has mainly focused on the role of students' first languages and the mobilization of other linguistic resources to enhance the language learning process. While the role of ELF for the English language classroom or the use of ELF as the medium of instruction in non-language courses continue to be discussed and investigated, the role of ELF as a mediating language for teaching and learning a third language remains underexplored (for exceptions, see Ife 2008; Wang 2013; Turnbull 2018). The present study aims to enhance our understanding of the use of ELF in local language courses offered at higher education institutions or language schools and targeted at international students with different linguistic backgrounds. To address the research questions, in a first step, videos of classroom interaction will be recorded, transcribed and analyzed focusing on incidents of ELF use. In a second step, reflexive online-interviews with the course instructors and students will be conducted. Excerpts of the videos will be used to discuss examples of actual ELF use in the classroom.

This PhD is being supervised by Prof. Miriam A. Locher, Prof. Sybille Heinzmann and Prof. Susanne Ehrenreich.

Research on language use and learning during study abroad has primarily investigated students' use of the target language (TL) in a TL environment and the convergence of their TL skills towards a native speaker norm. To date, little is known about the multilingual practices that students engage in while studying abroad. From the perspective of multilingualism, contexts in which a local language is used, of which the students may have little or no previous knowledge, represents a fascinating case as students often heavily depend on English as a lingua franca (ELF) to interact with the host community and other international students. The present study aims to shed light on the role of ELF in mediating the learning of local languages in different ELF contexts. The goal is to investigate the extent to which ELF is employed in the foreign language classroom, by whom, under what circumstances and for what purposes. Additionally, the study aims at gaining a deeper understanding of course instructors' and students' attitudes toward the use of ELF in the foreign language classroom. Previous research on foreign language learning in the classroom has mainly focused on the role of students' first languages and the mobilization of other linguistic resources to enhance the language learning process. While the role of ELF for the English language classroom or the use of ELF as the medium of instruction in non-language courses continue to be discussed and investigated, the role of ELF as a mediating language for teaching and learning a third language remains underexplored (for exceptions, see Ife 2008; Wang 2013; Turnbull 2018). The present study aims to enhance our understanding of the use of ELF in local language courses offered at higher education institutions or language schools and targeted at international students with different linguistic backgrounds. To address the research questions, in a first step, videos of classroom interaction will be recorded, transcribed and analyzed focusing on incidents of ELF use. In a second step, reflexive online-interviews with the course instructors and students will be conducted. Excerpts of the videos will be used to discuss examples of actual ELF use in the classroom.

This PhD is being supervised by Prof. Miriam A. Locher, Prof. Sybille Heinzmann and Prof. Susanne Ehrenreich.

This doctoral dissertation is devoted to the study of the translation of linguistic impoliteness phenomena in fictional texts in English, French and Italian. I join three different research fields: interpersonal pragmatics, the pragmatics of fiction, and translation studies. This project is intended as an extension of my Master's thesis work on the translation into Italian of linguistic politeness stategies in Raymond Carver's short stories. The theoretical concepts I focus on are impoliteness, face-work, power, social distance and conflict negotiation, as well as the relationship between culture and language and the specificity of fictional data with regard to linguistic analysis (style, voice, dialogues, participation structure). I have built a multilingual and parallel corpus of contemporary short stories, written by an equal number of authors for each of the three source languages, and translated into the other two target languages. The unit of analysis within the texts are conflictual scenes. The data are coded and analyzed contrastively, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The aim of this work is threefold: first of all, to apply (im)politeness research on translation and fiction; second, to contribute to the scientific literature on impoliteness opposing English to less studies languages such as French and Italian; finally, and more particularly, to look for patterns of translation in realizing and conveying linguistic impoliteness, thus giving importance to the translation of pragmatic aspects which are deeply rooted in the context and culture of origin.

This PhD is supervised by Prof. Denis Jamet-Coupé and Prof. Miriam A. Locher.

While it has been widely acknowledged in academic and practitioner literature that increasing diversity in IT through inclusion of women is an ongoing priority, recent studies of IT workplaces in Europe and the US have found recurrent themes of gender discrimination cutting across different cultural contexts, including Switzerland and the UK (e.g. Schwab et al., 2020). In software development and project management in these contexts, agile ways of working are increasingly becoming the norm (Meyer, 2014). 'Agile' encompasses a number of practices and processes which put an emphasis on facilitating open and frequent communication, empowering teams, reducing hierarchies and foregrounding interpersonal and relational aspects of professional communication. This, in turn, has been argued to reduce (masculine) power structures (Barke, 2015; Boes et al., 2018), yet the field of IT in Euro-Western contexts remains largely male dominated. Furthermore, counter to the importance of communication to agile ways of working (e.g. Hummel et al., 2015), linguistic research on this phenomenon remains scarce, specifically with regard to gender issues. The present study thus takes a linguistic approach to agile ways of working in IT by way of an in-depth qualitative case study of different sociocultural contexts, including Switzerland, the UK, and the US. It deploys frameworks from linguistics at the intersection of discourse analysis, interactional sociolinguistics and identity construction to investigate agile ways of working through a gender lens. The dissertation draws on multiple data sources including over 52 hours of recordings of team and one-to-one meetings from a UK company, and semi-structured interviews with 22 IT professionals from Switzerland, the UK and the US; to explore the intricate relationship between gender, professional and personal identities at the interface of competing gendered discourses in the field of agile IT. Applying and refining current conceptualizations of gender in workplace discourse, the dissertation differentiates between different gender orders to capture the intricate and manifold processes of the gendering of work both in talk about work, and talk at work. Detailing how gendered practices are enacted and constructed by participants, the project enhances academic understanding of linguistic practices that construct agile IT workplaces as gendered on multiple levels. It thereby contributes to ongoing debates on the gendering of the IT industry specifically, and the gendering of work more globally, which in turn can provide much needed insight into persistent gender inequalities in the field.

This PhD was supervised by Prof. Miriam A. Locher and Prof. Stephanie Schnurr.