Professional Literacy
In our Research and Specialisation in Professional Literacy, we conduct research on communication in a society based on the division of labour. We examine how communities, organisations and individual stakeholders use linguistic processes and language products in order to participate in professionally relevant discourses and communicate with society. For example, we investigate communication in the financial industry. This enables us to discover which factors are decisive for communication between the respective stakeholders. In the professional world and society at large, this knowledge has an important role to play because it shows how professional literacy can – and must – be developed further in a transdisciplinary manner in the areas of university teaching, continuing education and professional practice.
In focus
Communication in the financial world
The book Transdisciplinarity in Financial Communication | Writing for Target Readers identifies and analyses problems relating to text production in the financial world from three complementary perspectives: problem identification, problem analysis and problem solving. It thus explains why solving these problems through transdisciplinary collaboration benefits both theory and practice as well as society. Based on 25 years of ethnographic research, around 2,100 text products and more than 190 interviews with various stakeholders, measures are being developed and evaluated in order to improve the communicative potential of financial texts and make them accessible to different stakeholder groups.
Projects
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Optimisation of reports in psychosocial family counselling
Psychosocial family counselling writes reports for stakeholders with different levels of literacy and expertise. Writing coaching and insights from corpus analysis enable family counselling to optimise their writing processes and to be understood by the stakeholders in the intended message. ...
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Professional communication in religious matters
In a transdisciplinary research collaboration, suitable tools are being developed with which the Swiss Pastoral Sociological Institute SPI can increasingly inform and communicate externally and in a target group-oriented manner about its work, projects and research results.
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Communication tools in addiction prevention
Together with those responsible for the Addiction Prevention Center Zurich Oberland, suitable communication tools are being developed in a transdisciplinary research project that focus on successful public storytelling. The goal is to sensitize the stakeholder groups comprehensively and appropriately to the topic of ...
Research-based teaching
The findings from the research conducted by the Professional Literacy professorship are integrated into the MA in Applied Linguistics as well as the CAS Writing: Professional Writing, Editing and Designing. The objective is always to promote and develop professional literacy in a sustainable manner so that language can be used in professionally relevant discourses within the subject area as well as in a domain-specific and social context.
Team
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Professor of Professional Literacy
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Research Associate, Chair of Professional Literacy