Research at the School of Applied Linguistics
Language matters. At the School of Applied Linguistics, we research the key role played by language and communication, enabling practitioners and society at large to reap practical benefits from linguistics.
The two strategic areas of energy research and societal integration shape the ZHAW research agenda, and the School of Applied Linguistics incorporates related topics into its own projects and labs. For example:
- Swiss-AL, a web corpus of Swiss sources, has been compiled by the School of Applied Linguistics and is used by researchers and students to conduct data-supported and data-driven research on public discourses in multilingual Switzerland, including monitoring the energy discourse.
- In the LAIC Lab – Language Accessibility and Inclusive Communication Lab, our researchers collaborate with service providers, target group representatives and relevant associations to develop practical, needs-based solutions. These draw on well-established research about communication modes that foster societal inclusion for everyone.
The ZHAW is a member of CLARIN – Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure. It is a pan-European research infrastructure aiming to render accessible all digital language resources and tools from all over Europe through a single sign-on online environment.
Professorships and labs
In the professorships at the School of Applied Linguistics, we conduct research on language use in domain-specific communication, language-mediated cross-domain communication and media-mediated public communication.
Domain-specific communication
- German as a Foreign/Second Language (Prof. Dr. Liana Konstantinidou)
- Digital Linguistics (Prof. Dr. Philipp Dreesen, Prof. Dr. Cerstin Mahlow)
- Language for Special Purposes and Knowledge Transfer (Prof. Dr. Felix Steiner)
- Intercultural Studies and Linguistic Diversity (Prof. Dr. Christiane Hohenstein)
- Language Management and Globalisation (Prof. Dr. Patrick Studer)
- Language Competence and Knowledge Development (Prof. Dr. Jörg Keller Paul)
Language-mediated cross-domain communication
- Applied Discourse Studies (Prof. Dr. habil. Ulla Kleinberger)
- Accessibility Studies (Dr. Sarah Ebling)
- Interpreting Studies (Prof. Dr. Michaela Albl-Mikasa)
- Human–Machine Communication (Prof. Dr. Alice Delorme Benites)
- Technical Communication (Prof. Dr. Dipl.-Ing. Catherine Badras)
- Translation Studies (Dr. Caroline Lehr)
Media-mediated public communication
- Journalism Studies (Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Wyss)
- Media Literacy (Prof. Dr. Guido Keel)
- Media Linguistics (Prof. Dr. Aleksandra Gnach, Prof. Dr. Wibke Weber)
- Organisational Communication and Management (Prof. Dr. Nicole Rosenberger Staub)
- Organisational Communication and Public Spheres (Prof. Dr. Peter Stücheli-Herlach)
The labs at the School of Applied Linguistics bring researchers in the professorships together with stakeholders from all areas of society. These experts from academia and professional practice collaborate to develop innovative and sustainable solutions for the benefit of society.
Projects
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Monitoring Sustainability
Embracing Sustainability is an overarching goal in ZHAW’s strategic leadership, research and education. We contribute to this goal by: building a richly annotated text corpus on Swiss sustainability discourse (defined by the UN Sustainable Development Goals), giving access to the corpus for all ZHAW members and the ...
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SPPC: Swiss Process–Product Corpus of Student Writing Development
SPPC (Swiss Process–Product Corpus of Student Writing Development) is a novel longitudinal corpus of L1 student writing, linking automatically annotated and aggregated process data with the resulting product (text) and competence data. It will facilitate the development of teaching interventions with appropriate ...
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Akteure – Diskurse – Medien
The objective of the project is to explore to what extent central developmental steps of school pedagogy from the mid-19th century are related to current debates in Switzerland. The hypothesis being investigated is that the school as an educational institution became the exposed object of the social statistics that ...