17/02/2016
Doc AG Humanities and Linguistics: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches
Thematic Focus
Language information can be studied in different ways like discourse and content analysis, grammatical description, language production and perception, language practices in different regional, social, historical and religious contexts etc. In corpus studies and language corpora there is extensive possible additional context information, therefore, a general knowledge of materials in different fields is absolutely necessary for researchers. In order to expand the range of methods in addition to a specific field like linguistics, an interdisciplinary approach is strongly recommended.
Hence providing a nice and motivating atmosphere for experts and students of linguistics and related fields the Doc AG will form a springboard for interdisciplinary discussions on choice of method and theoretical frameworks.
One sub-field that is relevant for many disciplines is discourse analysis. Diverse fields such as Sociology, Psychology, Politics, Law, Journalism, Religious Studies and Linguistics itself are connected via their use of discourse analysis investigating social interaction and human perception of language and mind. Other fields which are strongly connected with corpus study esp. corpus linguistics are those which deal with ethnic topics, traditions and human history.
Corpus linguistics deals with large as well as small data collections, which require different methods of analysis (qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method). Besides, differing theoretical frameworks determine relevant parameters for the analysis. The collaboration of experts in fields such as Anthropology, History and Geography allows for a comprehensive understanding of complex linguistic data. Regional and geographical differences and migration of speech communities can influence both oral and written language. Anthropological linguistics, Geolinguistics and Historical Linguistics share similar insights in the study of languages.
Above all, using new tools and instruments and applying new technologies in linguistic studies demands experts in computer science. Sampling, weighting and estimation in survey methodology is connected with statistics and mathematics. The growing importance of computational methods increased the interest in computational linguistics and digital humanities.
Besides the semantic and pragmatic analysis, linguistic corpora represent rich material for other fields of linguistics like phonetics and phonology. Phonetics is closely interlinked with Physics regarding the study of acoustic parameters of oral language recording. However, researchers ignoring parameters of other disciplines often collect linguistic data for a specific purpose only. We intend to create awareness of other disciplines’ needs so that collected data can be used by other researchers as well, thereby enhancing the sustainability of research data.
Bringing experts from all these fields together and having the experience of them helps PhD students and postdocs in promoting and optimizing their research projects and writing their dissertation. In addition, such a network and cooperation can bring new ideas and defining research projects in larger scales.
Form of Collaboration and Planned Projects
Generally, the aim is to exchange and share ongoing experiences with regard to different topics, such as theoretical and methodological issues, in the field of linguistics as a general cover term. In addition, we would like to bring early career researchers together and share the experience of our writing processes during our dissertation projects. In order to achieve the goals of this group we need to form a group of experts in different related fields and organise workshops and working contexts for improving the knowledge of PhDs and Postdocs.
In workshops we will discuss specific topics like sampling, weighting and estimation in linguistic corpora. In tutorials we will practice different tools and software for digitizing, archiving, and data analyses. In regular meetings we want to give our members the opportunity to present their work and discuss problems and obstacles in a cooperative atmosphere. This improves creativity of students and brings up new ideas and, not to underestimate, it also creates a nice social atmosphere and social life beside academic work.
Furthermore, we plan to regularly organize seminars to which we want to invite experienced researches.
Goals
• Providing a motivating situation for discussing the topics and researches in the field of linguistics and related fields
• Helping and supporting each other in the process of doing PhD and dissertation
• Sharing writing strategies for expose, dissertation and scientific papers
• Providing for each other necessary needs during the process of doing projects like technical solutions, software needs, literature sources
• Enhancing synergy effects by bringing early-career researchers (graduate students, PhD candidates and Postdocs) of different branches of linguistics look beyond their specific disciplinary boundaries and draw inspiration from neighboring fields (with its emphasis on cross-disciplinary exchange).
We envisage collaboration with a group of external experts like the ones listed below who we are in contact with. Some of them have already indicated their willingness to come to Frankfurt and stage a workshop for our Doc AG and other interested PhD candidates:
Professor Michael Dunn (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Professor Dunn’s current research focus is on the evolutionary processes acting within language and between language and culture: the evolutionary history of languages, the evolutionary dependencies between different aspects of language, and the cultural factors which shape the evolution of language.
Website: http://www.lingfil.uu.se/staff/michael-dunn/
Associate Professor Jaffer Sheyholislami (Applied Linguistics & Discourse Studies) (Carlton University, Ontario, Canada)
Dr. Sheyholislami’s main research interests area are Critical Discourse Analysis, Systemic Functional Linguistics, Heritage Languages, Kurdish language and linguistics, Language and media, Language and identity, Writing in academic settings, Language policy and planning
Website: http://carleton.ca/slals/people/sheyholislami-jaffer/
Dr. Thomas Juegel (CNRS, Paris, France)
Dr. Juegel’s main interest lies in the history of modern Iranian languages and their historical development
Website: http://www.iran-inde.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article582&lang=fr
Jun. Prof. Dr. Elsa Clavé (Goethe University, Frankfurt a/M, Germany)
Dr. Clavé’s main research interests focus on topics related to Southeast Asian history, Islam, Conflicts, Nationalism, Social movements
Website: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/59483938/clave
Associate Professor Mojtaba Monshizadeh (Allame Tabatabayi University, Tehran, Iran)
Dr. Monshizadeh’s main research interests are Teaching Persian to non-Persian speaker, Historical linguistics of Iranian languages, modern Iranian languages
