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Abstract: Crip Linguistics in Application

This talk discusses the Crip Linguistics Manifesto by Henner & Robinson (2023) where the authors argue for a critical disability framework for the study of languaging.

Biography - Prof. Octavian Robinson

Octavian Robinson is associate professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on language attitudes towards signed languages within academia and linguistic protectionism among deaf communities at the intersections of gender, disability, race, and sexuality.  He is also Director of the Buckeye Sign Language and Multimodal Collaborative (5S5S).

Abstract: Pragmatics of Translation

This talk explores the synergies between research in pragmatics and translation studies. Students will be introduced to key challenges in translation practices that can be explored with a pragmatic lens. The definition of translation is approached from a broad perspective and we will look at practices that translate from different and similar modalities (e.g. oral, written, sensuary). Within this wide field, the main focus will be on challenges in translating aspects of relational work, that is the nuances on identity construction that linguistic nuances convey. Examples will primarily be drawn from subtitling and dubbing of fictional artefacts (). In highlighting that translations always involve acts of creative recreation and decision-taking, this understanding of translation practices allows linguists to glimpse underlying language ideologies that can be fruitfully exploited for pragmatics in general.

Biography - Miriam Locher

Miriam A. Locher is Professor of the Linguistics of English at the University of Basel. Her research is on interpersonal pragmatics, linguistic im/politeness, relational work, the exercise of power, disagreements, advice-giving (in health contexts), the pragmatics of fiction and computer-mediated communication. She supervised the research project (SNF 2009–2012) and (SNF 2012–2016), and worked on a project on (UniBas 2008-2014). Currently, she is working on a project on (UniBas 2019-current). Her comprise monographs, edited collections and special issues as well as a numerous articles in journals and collections.

Abstract: Irish English and World Englishes

The objective of this paper is to apply a synthesis of models for world Englishes to Irish English, for which data from ICE-corpora, the Handbook of Varieties of English, the Mouton Atlas, eWAVE, and the GloWbE corpus are used, and to which many approaches are applied: geo-political, dynamic-model, corpus, statistical, and multi-functional factor analysis. The paper’s relevance lies in its bringing together wide-ranging and seemingly disparate material through the lens of Irish English as a common denominator. The paper shows the difficulties of applying top-down models to empirical corpus data and concurs that the gap is ultimately unbridgeable. Nevertheless, in so far as status distinctions can be inferred, this paper also concurs with the many different findings that, as a standardised variety, despite a historical legacy of contact, Irish English is indeed an L1.

Biobraphy - Prof. John Kirk

John Kirk, former Full Professor of English Linguistics, University of Vienna, is a Dialectologist, working on Scots and Scottish English, Irish English and World Englishes, and a Corpus Linguist, specializing in corpus compilation and annotation and in corpus analysis, especially pragmatic discourse analysis.

Abstract: Neoliberalism in Applied Linguistics

In this webinar, I will first focus on how my way of framing social realities for research purposes is informed by Marxist political economy. I will then move to an examination of the current dominant version of global capitalism, AKA neoliberalism. I will briefly outline a history of how neoliberalism came to be such a dominant force in our lives, before considering a constellation of defining characteristics, including how it involves class warfare. Above all I will emphasize that neoliberalism is not just about economics but about every aspect of our lives and ultimately who we are as human beings in the twenty-first century. Finally, against the previous theoretical backdrop, I will consider the impact of neoliberalism on a selection of the phenomena that applied linguists research.

Biography - Prof. David Block

David Block is Honorary Professor of Sociolinguistics at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Drawing on scholarship in political economy, history, sociology, communication and media studies, anthropology, geography and philosophy, he has published journal articles, book chapters and books on a wide range of topics over the past four decades, including globalization and language practices, multiculturalism and multilingualism, identity, political discourses and neoliberalism, inequality and social class. His most recent authored books are Political Economy and Sociolinguistics (Bloomsbury, 2018); Post-Truth and Political Discourse (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019);  Innovations and Challenges in Identity Research (2022), Interviews in Applied Linguistics: Autobiographical Reflections on Research Processes (2024) and Diagonalism in Online Populist Discourse: Left Moving Right (2026). With Will Simpson, he co-edits the Routledge book series Language, Society and Political Economy.

Abstract: The Metaphor of Voice & Migration Discourses

The metaphor of voice is often used in relation to migration discourses; from the activist organization ‘Migrant Voice’ to academic symposia, such as the recent ‘Migrants Voices in Discourse: bottom-up perspectives on migration’. Following Benoit-Barné & Martine (2021), ‘voice’ may be understood as referring to sound (the literal sense), personal style of expression, as a discursive standpoint, and as agency. In this talk, I address the metaphor of voice both to draw attention of its status as a metaphor, and to unpick how it is used in discourses about migration by migrants. The three main research questions are: 

1. How do one (collectivised) group of migrants conceptualise and use the voice metaphor?​
2. How does this compare with other(collectivised) groups of speakers?​
3. Who has a voice in migration discourses? 

The main corpus is the 1000 Dreams Corpus (Del Fante 2025), which is a collection of interviews conducted by refugees and with refugees. These were part of the 1000 Dreams project which was run by Witness Change, ‘a non-profit organization [which] exists to improve life for marginalized groups by amplifying their stories’. The findings show almost half of occurrences of voice in the 1000 Dreams corpus were metaphorical and the majority employed voice to indicate agency. Participants conceptualise, both their own voice as having agency, and themselves as an amplifier for other people’s metaphorical voices. Compared to the reference corpora, Parlamint and Spoken BNC2014, the speakers in the 1000 Dreams corpus were more likely to refer to voice, and when referring to voice, to be using it metaphorically. Furthermore, the participants are distinctive in framing their (metaphorical) voices as powerful. Which in turn contrasts with public discourses of migrants as lacking voice. Therefore, I conclude by revisiting the public discourses of migration in Parliamint to understand who has a voice in those migration discourses.

Biography - Prof. Charlotte Taylor

is Professor of Discourse and Persuasion at the University of Sussex. Her research centres on the analysis of language as used for evaluative/persuasive purposes. This includes the analysis of linguistic representations (how are we persuaded to think of a group of people or phenomena in a particular way?) and the analysis of linguistic interactions (how do speakers align themselves with and against others?). Her recent projects have investigated discourses of migration, nostalgia and discourse, and the framing of water.