Speakers 2024
Ulrike Tabbert
University of Huddersfield, UK
April 8, 2024
9.15 a.m. CEST
Linguistic representation of criminals and crimes
My talk gives an overview of some of my research projects, all in relation to the linguistic representation of criminals and crimes. We begin with the construction of crime and criminals in the British Press (Tabbert, 2015) and analyse the language used in newspaper reports. How can such a linguistic analysis be linked to criminological frameworks used to explain why people commit crimes? Is there a noticeable difference to be found when we then look at the language used in a crime fiction novel (Simon Beckett's (2010) 'The calling of the grave’)? How does an offender suffering from schizophrenia talk about his crime and what patterns can be found in his writings (Tabbert 2022)? The fourth research project that concludes this talk takes us to Sherko Bekas’ poems and how he uses language in support of the Kurds and their fight against oppression and state crimes committed against their people (Tabbert 2023). In each of the four sections of my talk, we will discuss examples from the texts and conclusions that can be drawn from their analysis.
Ulrike Tabbert is a Senior Public Prosecutor (Oberamtsanwältin) based in Germany and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield in the UK. She holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Huddersfield.
Linguistic impoliteness: A brief survey
Primarily situated within linguistic pragmatics, studies of linguistic impoliteness have drawn input from multiple disciplines, from history to psychology. Although work on impoliteness began to appear at the beginning of the 1990s, it was not until around 2008 that it dramatically accelerated. Nowadays, it is frequently treated alongside matters of politeness, rather than separately from them, as evidenced by the rise of the term "(im)politeness".
Drawing on one continuous strand of my research over the last 30 years, the bulk of this talk addresses a series of questions about linguistic impoliteness, including: what it is, how it differs from politeness, whether it has to be intentional to count as impoliteness, what the strategies and formulae used for impoliteness might be, why prosody is so important, and how people respond to it. This is not, of course, a complete list, but it will serve to raise a variety of theoretical, descriptive and methodological points.
Jonathan Culpeper is the head of the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University in the UK. His work spans pragmatics, English language (especially historical aspects) and stylistics. Within pragmatics, he is particularly interested in interpersonal pragmatics and (im)politeness.
Jonathan Culpeper
Lancaster University UK
APRIL 8, 2024
11 a.m. CEST
Junfei Hu
University of Louvain, BEL
APRIL 8, 2024
1 p.m. CEST
Discourse segmentation and turn-taking
In this presentation, I aim to introduce the concept of operationalizing the segmentation of spoken English into conversational discourse units (CDUs). Following this introduction, I will discuss how such segmentation facilitates the exploration of discourse prediction. This will be demonstrated through the analysis of one case study where I explored how discourse segmentation and turn-taking interact.
Junfei Hu is a PhD Candidate and Marie Curie Early-Stage Researcher at the University of Louvain in Belgium. His research centres on the role of discourse segments in prediction and alignment within dialogues. He previously conducted research as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, investigating the interplay between transitivity and subjectivity in Spoken Mandarin Chinese. He also served as a guest researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, focusing on the role of gesture in predictive language processing.