UNIverse - Public Research Portal
Profile Photo

Prof. Dr. Miriam Locher

Department of Languages and Literatures
Profiles & Affiliations

Projects & Collaborations

19 found
Show per page
Project cover

PhD Ehrsam: The Role of English as a Lingua Franca in the Foreign Language Classroom

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

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.

Project cover

PhD Ehrsam: The Role of English as a Lingua Franca in the Foreign Language Classroom

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

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.

Project cover

PhD Nisticó: The translation of linguistic impoliteness in English, French, and Italian

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

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.

Project cover

DIS-AGREE

Research Project  | 6 Project Members

Das geisteswissenschaftliche Projekt aus der Linguistik steht unter der Leitung der Universität Freiburg und wird gemeinsam mit den Universitäten Basel, Haute-Alsace und Strasbourg umgesetzt. Ziel ist es, aktuelle Forschungsansätze an den vier Universitäten in drei Ländern zum Thema "(dis)agreement & (dis)alignment" (d.h. Konfliktpotentiale in Gesprächen) zusammenzuführen und mit innovativen Methoden in Multimodalität und Multimedialität weiterzuentwickeln. Ein besonderer Fokus wird auf die Frage gelegt, wie mittels sprachlicher und körperlicher Ressourcen Konfliktmomente in der Interaktion ausgehandelt werden. Das Projekt wird von Eucor - The European Campus mit "Seed Money" in der Förderlinie "Forschung und Innovation" unterstützt. Kontakt: Universität Freiburg: Stefan Pfänder ( stefan.pfaender@romanistik.uni-freiburg.de ); Universität Basel: Miriam Locher ( miriam.locher@unibas.ch ); Université de Haute-Alsace: Greta Komur-Thilloy ( greta.komur-thilloy@uha.fr ); Université de Strasbourg: Rudolph Sock ( sock@unistra.fr ) Projektveranstaltungen: Workshop: Multimedia I: SMS: "Social practices of (dis)agreement and (dis)alignment" ( Mulhouse, 16.01.2020 ) Workshop: Multimodality: Multiactivites: "Alignment and alignables in the analysis of interaction" ( Zoom 25.03.2021 ) Workshop: Multimedia II: Film: Part 1: (Dis)Agree: Affective stance in fictional and non-fictional interactional scenarios ( Zoom, 15.10.2020 ) Part 2: Dis/agree and argumentation in school contexts ( Zoom, 19.03.2021 ) Workshop: (Dis)-agreement und (dis-)alignment: positioning practices in specialized discourse from a construction grammar perspective ( Basel, 27.-28. 09 2021 )

Project cover

PhD Loew: On identities and gender at work: a linguistic case study of agile IT

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

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.

Project cover
Project cover

PhD Bieri: Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in a Swiss Context: The Linguistic Challenges and Implications of Teaching Biology in English (CLIL) and German (non-CLIL) analyzed through the Lens of Translanguaging and Technicality

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

Over the last two decades, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programs, where a content subject is taught in an additional language, have become increasingly popular, and Switzerland is no exception. Due to its plurilingual landscape and its decentralized education system, Switzerland offers a particularly diverse context for the study of CLIL, which, compared to other European countries, is not that advanced yet. Therefore, this thesis investigates, in an extensive case study, the linguistic requirements for students and teachers in CLIL (English) and non-CLIL (German) biology lessons at a Swiss upper-secondary school ( Gymnasium ). In a self-collected corpus (EG_BIO corpus) consisting of 31 video-recorded CLIL and non-CLIL biology lessons, two particularly relevant aspects are analyzed using a mixed-methods approach: the use of multilingual and -modal resources (translanguaging) and the role of technical terms (technicality) in the classroom. Since biology lessons in Switzerland offer a highly multilingual environment, students' and teachers' L1s (Swiss German/ other L1s), the languages of instruction (German or English), as well as the source languages of technical terms (Greek and Latin) - the present study examines the use and frequency of translanguaging practices in CLIL and non-CLIL biology lessons. Translanguaging has often been investigated using qualitative measures, therefore the study proposes a model to operationalize translanguaging for quantitative analysis (research focus 1). Since science subjects such as biology are often marked by a high density of technical terms, the study further investigates the complicated relationship between English and German technical vocabulary as used in biology, again by proposing a model to identify and analyze technical terms from various perspectives (research focus 2). Finally, the present study connects the two previous analyses and explores the connection between translanguaging and technicality, and investigates how multilingual and -modal resources are used to negotiate technical terms (research focus 3). Findings show that translanguaging practices and technical terms are used in complex and diverse ways in CLIL and non-CLIL biology lessons. Translanguaging practices are rare in both CLIL and non-CLIL biology lessons, while technical vocabulary makes up roughly a tenth of the classroom discourse. Particularly translanguaging with source languages, a strategy used by one of the teachers to negotiate subject-specific terminology, seems to be a potentially successful pedagogy in science teaching, even more so in CLIL science lessons. Overall, the process-oriented comparative study shows how language and content are closely intertwined at the level of translanguaging and technicality, and thus contributes to a further our understanding how language and content work in integration in CLIL and non-CLIL biology lessons.


This PhD was supervised by Prof. Miriam A. Locher and Prof. Ana Llinares.

Project cover

PhD Meier: Language Education & the Global Care Work Economy. Mapping Structural Inequalities in Philippine Nurse Migration to Germany

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

This study investigates the role language education plays in the labor migration of Philippine nurses who prepare, and are prepared, for the German market. The role of language in migration has increased dramatically as the demand for so-called skilled migrants has risen. With language competency as a job requirement, language adds value to future migrants. In 2013 Germany and the Philippines implemented a bilateral labor agreement that opened the possibility for Philippine nurses to migrate to and work in Germany. There are historical continuities of imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy- the centrality of language, however, is a change: Germany imposed a language certificate (B1 or B2) as a visa requirement. This decolonial, feminist ethnography is based on a six-month research stay in the Philippines. Through participant observation and interviews, I gained insight into the personal level of migrant workers and teachers. I further accessed the institutional level through participant observation and by collecting and analyzing materials related to the regulatory framework. The analysis shows how language education is central to the regulation of workers and border control, how it develops into a profitable business for the two states and players in the industry (including brokers and language education and testing providers), and how language learning institutions serve as places where social inequalities are reproduced. The analysis forms a derive: a critical drift maps the migration infrastructure and links its different layers. The focus is on material living conditions and affective responses of Philippine nurses who learn German - it investigates how language education and language testing with their different temporalities help prepare migrants while opening a space and the possibility of solidarities that cannot be completely regulated. This study contributes to research in critical sociolinguistics. It can, on the one hand, be taken as a situated knowledge on the linguistic preparation of Philippine nurses migrating to Germany. On the other hand, it is intentionally embedded in the broader context of language and an international division of reproductive labor in order to provide insight on the connections between language and imperialism, language and capitalism, and language and state authority with an explicit intersectional perspective.


The published version of the PhD is accessible in open access by following the link below.

This PhD was supervised by Prof. Miriam A. Locher and Prof. Annelies Häcki-Buhofer.

Project cover

PhD Messerli: Repetition in Telecinematic Humour - How US American sitcoms employ repetitive patterns in the construction of multimodal humour

Research Project  | 3 Project Members

This dissertation examines the roles multimodal repetition plays in constructing humour within the communicative setting of Telecinematic Discourse (the discourse of fictional film and television). It brings together research in pragmatics, stylistics and humour theory and empirically analyses a corpus of US American sitcoms in order to create a comprehensive overview and a typology of repetition-based humour in telecinematic discourse, which remains a lacuna in each of the mentioned research traditions. The corpus for the analyses consists of 8 randomly selected US Sitcoms produced between 2010 and 2016, which feature a laugh track and thus metacommunicatively mark where humour is intended. Based on these empirical analyses, the study establishes the typical patterns of repetition in the humour of US American sitcoms with a laugh track and further defines that particular genre, but it also demonstrates the variation between the subcorpora consisting of the individual sitcoms analysed here. Thus, it also pays heed to the heterogeneity of multimodal repetition-based humour. In terms of contributions to theory, the dissertation also addresses interactions between surprise and repetition, which lead to a critical re-examination of the mechanisms of incongruity and resolution commonly understood as the defining processes in humour production and reception. This means that one result will be a reformulated theory of humour that is based on the processes of incongruity and resolution and pays particular attention to the notions of surprise and repetition. Given the fact that the language of film and television has only recently become a subject of linguistic study in its own right, the research done in this dissertation is also important as a contribution to the description of language use in this specific genre and setting and thus to the telecinematic branch of the pragmatics of fiction. Finally, it is one of very few book-length studies of humour in film and television and, using repetition-based humour in sitcoms as an example, also serves as a worthwhile addition to linguistic humour research more generally.