current projects

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English as a Lingua Franca in the Family

Linguistic field: English as a lingua franca, multilingualism, variational linguistics, language acquisition, sociolinguistics
Data: audio-recordings of multilingual family dinner table conversations, introspective interviews, language portraits
Topic: the role of English as a lingua franca in multilingual families
Focus: English in Europe, translanguaging

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Linguistic field: variational pragmatics, World Englishes, pragmatic profiling
Data: written questionnaire including discourse completion tasks, dialogue production tasks and multiple choice questions; role play data, interviews, focus group discussions, elicited metadiscourse, media communication
Topic: variety-specific ways of using Namibian English in communication
Focus: establishing a pragmatic profile of Namibian English based on norms and tendencies of communicative behavior in a range of social contexts

Linguistic field: pragmatics, L2 learning, pragmatic competence
Data: from the QEU: written questionnaire including discourse completion tasks, dialogue production tasks and multiple choice questions; L1 English, L2 English and L1 German data
Topic: the role and development of pragmatic competence in the context of L2 English learning
Focus: defining pragmatic competence and developing an instrument for assessing pragmatic competence

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Linguistic field: CMC
Data: questionnaire on the use of various communication tools, sources of information, use of hyperlinks, and attitudes towards plagiarism; website analysis of online profiles of active linguists; screen-capture video material to gather hands-on information on what people do when using the
Internet for academic purposes

The ACiME project has been completed and corresponding publications are in progress. Recently, a follow-up project has been accepted for funding by the Humboldstiftung, namely
Plagiarism in Academia vis-à-vis Ethical Aspects and Common Practice (more information on
this new project will follow soon).

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Linguistic field: English as a lingua franca, Business English, figurative language use, pragmatics
Data: Corpus of naturally occurring business e-mails, web pages by international organisations, survey on Business English as a lingua franca in multi-national organisations
Topic: Figurative language use and pragmatic features in English as a lingua franca in international business communication
Focus: Idioms and linguistic features of business e-mails sent in an English as a lingua franca context between native and non-native business partners in a multi-national team; employees' experience of working in English as a lingua franca and possible difficulties they face

Linguistic field: Pragmatics, (im)politeness research, CMC, genre analysis
Data: Corpus of naturally occurring student emails, writing tasks, rating tasks
Topic: Textual norms of email communication in institutional contexts
Focus: Formal, structural and pragmatic features of student emails sent to a professor and their perceptional evaluation