We support openness in research by making the talks available to the broader research community, either by attending the live talk or by watching the recorded talk. All presentations are given in English.
DUAL talks are one hour long, including a question & answer session. The talks are given online (currently through Zoom), which means that there are no geographical boundaries for participation. DUAL talks are open and free of charge, but participants need to register beforehand.
Register for upcoming talks
Two to four talks are scheduled per academic year. If you would like to be notified about upcoming DUAL talks, contact Miguel Garcia-Yeste via email: mgy@du.se
DUAL talks 2023
Communication in digital workspaces: exploring new practices in virtual work
Erika Darics, Department of Communication and Information Studies, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
Abstract
With the increase of virtualness in our working day, we rely increasingly on a range of digitally mediated communication platforms. In this talk I present the findings of a project that exposed the complex ways members of a virtual team orient to these platforms, and how these orientations are both reflected in and are constituted through their communication practices (Darics & Gatti, 2019). Viewed through a tri- dimensional lens of 'tool', 'place' and 'way of being' we will explore how the orientation to the communication platform enables team members to negotiate their ways of working, their individual and group identities, and ultimately, to create a shared sense of meaning about their work. In the talk we will reflect on how virtual work - as accelerated during the pandemic - may lead to a change in attitude towards the professional and private divide, both in terms of identities and physical contexts (e.g., Rossette-Crake & Buckwalter, 2022).
References
Darics, E., & Cristina Gatti, M. (2019). Talking a team into being in online workplace collaborations: The discourse of virtual work. Discourse Studies, 21(3), 237-257.
Rossette-Crake, F., & Buckwalter, E. (Eds.). (2022). COVID-19, communication and culture: Beyond the global workplace. Taylor & Francis.
Biography
Erika Darics is a critical discourse scholar/applied linguist and an avid advocate of critical language awareness. A sought after keynote speaker, the co-host of the Words and Actions podcast, Erika is also the convenor of Responsus, a research group focusing on the role of language and discourse in sustainability challenges. Her co-authored textbook Language in Business, Language at work is used world-wide. She has published widely about language and discourse in business and professional contexts, including her recent co-authored book Organisation, Communication and Language: A Case Book of Methods for Analysing Workplace Text and Talk. You can find her on Twitter as @LinguaDigitalis, on LinkedIn, for a (virtual) chat about all things language (awareness), work and future challenges.
Delimiting the Scope of Internet Pragmatics: What it Covers and What it Should Cover
Francisco Yus, University of Alicante
January 31
Abstract
There are three major questions that, according to Spencer-Oatey and Žegarac (2020: 72), a proper theory of pragmatics should be able to answer: (a) How do people communicate more than what the words or phrases of their utterances literally mean?; (b) why do people choose to say and/or interpret something in the way they do?; and (c) how do people manage contextual information? In the last few years pragmatics has made a lot of progress in answering these questions, especially within relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995). The main topic of my lecture will be about the transference of these questions (a-c) to internet pragmatics: are they directly applicable to this kind of communication? Does internet pragmatics address similar phenomena? Although the main objectives of pragmatics still apply to internet pragmatics (Yus, 2011, 2021), several facts, including (1) that a lot of the interactions take place with multimodal discourses, (2) through interfaces, and (3) between interlocutors who lack physical co-presence and often do not share the same background contextual assumptions, necessarily entails a readjustment and a broadening of its scope.
References
Spencer-Oatey, H., Žegarac, V. 2020. Pragmatics. In: Schmitt, N., Rodgers, M.P.H. (Eds.) An Introduction to Applied Linguistics (3rd edition). Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 72–90.
Sperber, D., Wilson, D. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition (2nd edition). Oxford: Blackwell.
Yus, F. 2011. Cyberpragmatics: Internet-Mediated Communication in Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Yus, F. 2021. Smartphone Communication: Interactions in the App Ecosystem. Abingdon: Routledge.
Biography
Francisco Yus is full professor at the University of Alicante (Spain). He has specialised in the application of pragmatics (especially relevance theory) to internet-mediated communication (Ciberpragmática. El uso del lenguaje en Internet, Ariel, 2001; Ciberpragmática 2.0. Nuevos usos del lenguaje en Internet, Ariel, 2010; Cyberpragmatics. Internet-Mediated Communication in Context, John Benjamins, 2011; Smartphone Communication: Interactions in the App Ecosystem, Routledge, 2021). His research has also focused on irony and humorous discourses (Humour and Relevance, John Benjamins, 2016). He is also the editor (with Chaoqun Xie) of the journal Internet Pragmatics (John Benjamins).
DUAL talks 2022
Online Consumer Reviews: Textuality, Interaction, Genre
Tuija Virtanen, Åbo Akademi
September 27
NB: This lecture was not recorded
Abstract
Online consumer reviews are a non-trivial part of many people’s everyday lives. Writers of reviews share ordinary expertise with real or imagined audiences on public sites and participate in the attention economy of the commercial online environment. In this talk, I will explore written online consumer reviews of fiction and non-fiction books on Amazon, approaching them from the perspectives of textuality, reviewers’ interactional efforts and genre dynamics. Investigating major lexical and structural routines manifest in the data, I will discuss users’ constructions of reviewer personae, credentials for the review, as well as their audience design in the a priori non-reciprocal discourse. I will round off with considerations of the online consumer review as a genre in its own right, part of today’s feedback society.
Biography
Tuija Virtanen is Professor Emerita of English Language and Literature at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. Her research interests lie in the fields of text and discourse linguistics, and pragmatics, encompassing studies of text/discourse strategies, text/discourse types and genre dynamics, the interface between grammar and text, corpus studies of textual phenomena, and the pragmatics of computer-mediated communication. She was co-editor of and contributor to Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication (de Gruyter Mouton 2013) and guest editor for special issues of Journal of Pragmatics, on Adaptability in New Media (2017) and Face-work in Online Discourse (2022). She serves as a member of the IPrA (International Pragmatics Association) Consultation Board, as well as of the editorial board of Language@Internet, and is an affiliate of the Center for Computer-Mediated Communication Research, Indiana University at Bloomington. She is a visiting fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, UK.
(Applied) Corpus Linguistics and Explorations of Workplace Discourse
Eric Friginal, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
March 15
Abstract
In this presentation, I argue for the important role of applied corpus linguistics as a methodological approach in language and social research in contributing linguistics-based explications of workplace discourse. Applied corpus linguistics is understood to include the use of corpus resources, techniques, and tools in order to, for example, examine patterning in public discourses so as to obtain novel understandings of how language is used and construed in specific contexts (Thompson & Friginal, 2020). I analyze frequency-based distributions and their various macro and micro societal and policy implications from specialized corpora of (primarily) English discourses in the workplace.
I have been exploring real-world recorded and transcribed texts from domains such as outsourced customer service call centers, healthcare, tourism and hospitality, global aviation, international maritime industry, and talk in multi-cultural and multimodal workplaces. My theoretical and analytical framework emphasizesthe identification of discursive practices across socio-cultural structures and task dimensions of talk in these domains, focusing especially upon speakers' understanding of role-relationships, discoursal goals and objectives, cultural and racial identities, and power dynamics at work. An iterative cycle which combines computational approaches to data extraction and a progression of stages (that also emphasizes qualitative and functional analyses) shows how the structure and meaning of professional cross-talk can be successfully described, interpreted, and explained using patterns and evidence from corpora (Baker, 2018; Friginal, 2020; Gentil, 2013). Specifically, as a focal study in the presentation, I highlight my current research in international aviation communications, exploring the language of pilots and air traffic controllers across various stages of flight. Implications for language policy and the development of dedicated training materials on aviation phraseology will be presented and discussed.
Biography
Eric Friginalis Professor of Applied Linguistics and (incoming) Head of Department of English and Communication at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Before moving to Hong Kong, he was Professor and Director of International Programs at the Department of Applied Linguistics and ESL at Georgia State University. He specializes in applied corpus linguistics, quantitative research, language policy and planning, technology and language teaching, sociolinguistics, cross-cultural communication, discipline-specific writing, and the analysis of spoken professional discourse in the workplace. His recent publications include The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Approaches to Discourse Analysis(2020), co-edited with Jack Hardy; Advances in Corpus-based Research on Academic Writing: Effects ofDiscipline, Register, and Writer Expertise, co-edited with Ute Römer and Viviana Cortes (2020); English in Global Aviation: Context, Research, and Pedagogy, with Elizabeth Mathews and Jennifer Roberts (2019); and Corpus Linguistics for English Teachers: New Tools, Online Resources, and Classroom Activities(2018). He is the founding co-editor-in-chief of Applied Corpus Linguistics (ACORP) Journal (with Paul Thompson).
DUAL talks 2021
Reflections on a research field in flux and how it shows in a journal: Applied Linguistics
Presenter: Anna Mauranen, University of Helsinki
September 14, 2021
Abstract
If we look at the programs of congresses, conferences, and publications in applied linguistics, the question arises what could be the common denominator in all this variety of topic areas, subfields, and interest groups. And could this enormous variety be captured in one journal? To the first question the answer is probably language, with perhaps some modifications and qualifications relating to its relevance to wider issues in societies and for individuals. The second question has been controversial, but the most obvious answer is no. There is a wealth of journals specializing in different facts of applied linguistics, and new ones spring up at an accelerating pace. But most established research fields also have their generic journals that publish high-quality papers in any specialism that falls broadly into the field. Applied Linguistics is one of those. Therefore, what it publishes and what kinds of submissions it receives inevitably reflects general trends in the field, and holds some interest value to anyone working in the research area.
This talk looks at recent developments in applied linguistics from the vantage point of Applied Linguistics, especially over the last seven years during which I have been its co-editor. It discusses some recent trends like the increased global orientation in the field, a growing wish to gain theoretical depth and methodological credibility while maintaining a close contact with language-relevant societal issues, and the sometimes surprisingly uneasy relationship with linguistics.
Applied linguistics clearly looks very different depending on the viewer's location and position in the world, and several narratives of its developments and issues are possible. There simply will never be one true account of how the field, or the journal, has progressed. This talk offers one individual's perceptions from one position and one location of what has been taking place.
Biography
Anna Mauranen is Professor and Research Director at the University of Helsinki, and the President of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. Her research and publications focus on ELF, language processing, academic discourses, and corpus linguistics She is a former co-editor of Applied Linguistics (2014-2021) and a founding co-editor of the Journal of English as a Lingua Franca. Recent books: Language Change: The Impact of English as a Lingua Franca (2020 C.U.P., co-ed w. Vetchinnikova); Linguistic Diversity on the EMI Campus (2019; Routledge, Co-ed w. Jenkins), Exploring ELF: Academic English shaped by non-native speakers (2012 C.U.P.)
(Un)attended this/these in undergraduate student writing: A corpus analysis of high- and low-rated L2 writers
Presenter: Joseph J. Lee, University of Ohio
March 30, 2021
Abstract
Style guides, writing textbooks, and even writing teachers frequently advocate against using anaphoric demonstrative pronouns (this/these) in academic writing, as they are considered to be vague cohesive markers. Yet anaphoric demonstratives are commonly used in academic texts, such as research articles, to establish textual cohesion. In an effort to offer pedagogical guidance in this area considered to be problematic for novice academic writers, research on the use of this/these in professional academic writing has gained increasing attention in recent decades. While these studies have contributed greatly to our understanding of the forms and functions of this/these in expert writing, we know little about how these demonstratives are used by second-language (L2) student writers or the relationship between the use of this/these and assessment of L2 student writing. In this talk, I will report on a comparative corpus-based study of the use of anaphoric demonstratives in high- and low-rated L2 student essays. I will first briefly introduce the corpus (the COLTE) from which the student essays were drawn and highlight previous studies conducted using the COLTE. I will then present the findings of the focal study on the relationship between the use of this/these and writing quality in L2 student essays. I will conclude with opportunities for future research and implications for L2 writing pedagogy.
Biography
Joseph J. Lee is currently an associate professor of instruction in the Department of Linguistics at Ohio University. His research interests include English for specific purposes, academic writing, applied corpus linguistics, genre studies, classroom discourse studies, and teacher education. He serves on several editorial boards of professional journals (e.g., Applied Corpus Linguistics, English for Specific Purposes). His research has been published in a range of applied linguistics journals including English for Specific Purposes, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, Journal of Second Language Writing, and System.
