The
GSS
department
is
currently
having
a
visitor
from
Mannheim:
Alexandra
Gubina,
Ph.D.
student
from
the
University
of
Mannheim,
who
also
works
at
the
Pragmatics
department
at
the
Leibniz-Institute
for
the
German
Language
(IDS).
Alex
is
staying
with
the
GSS
department
until
the
mid
of
April
to
work
on
her
dissertation
with
one
of
her
supervisors,
Prof.
Emma
Betz.
In her dissertation project, she analyzes linguistic resources for social actions in spoken German using the methods of Conversation Analysis (CA) and Interactional Linguistics (IL) under the supervision of Prof. Arnulf Deppermann and Prof. Emma Betz. Alex is especially looking at social action formats with modal verbs – recurrent multi-functional linguistic forms that, depending on the sequential context, can be used for different social actions in talk-in-interaction.
The main goal of her project is to determine all functions of these social action formats with modal verbs in social interaction. In addition, she tries to find out which contextual factors the recipients rely on in order to ascribe a specific action to a specific format. In March, Alex is going to undertake another short research stay at the University of Colorado (Boulder) to work with Prof. Barbara Fox who originally introduced the notion of "social action format" into the CA and IL research.
Alex decided to do research at UW in order to profit from the cultural and professional exchange with other professors and grad students. So far, she really enjoys working on her dissertation project at another desk than her German one!
Alex
is
going
to
hold
a
Data
Session
discussing
examples
from
her
project
on
the
26th
of
March
at
9:30
in
ML
349.
Feel
free
to
join
and
get
to
know
Alex
and
her
work!