Bonn Talks on Recent Trends in Applied Linguistics

*Using mixed methods to analyze stance: A variationist approach *

Dr. Katharina Pabst, Radboud University Nijmegen

Friday, July 18, 2.15 pm - 3.45 pm CEST

Sign up here: https://uni-bonn.zoom-x.de/meeting/register/7zWSRP69R8SZWZptF6wfMA

In this talk, I will introduce a framework for coding speaker stance (i.e., the way individuals position themselves towards an interaction) that I developed with colleagues from the University of Toronto. Our framework, which combines insights from variationist sociolinguistics and pragmatics, is based on pragmatic tests that offer a replicable way of capturing an interactional phenomenon such as stance quantitatively. Drawing on two case studies of complementizer (that) – i.e., the variation between overt that and zero in sentences such as I think (that) linguistic variation is fun – I discuss challenges and opportunities of using this framework, as well as its implications for the study of language and social meaning.

Prof. Dr. Robert Fuchs | Head of Department and Professor of English Linguistics | Department of English, American and Celtic Studies | University of Bonn | Rabinstr. 8 53113 Bonn, Germany | https://uni-bonn.academia.edu/RFuchs | https://www.iaak.uni-bonn.de/bael/en/people/chair/prof-dr-robert-fuchs | https://sites.google.com/view/rflinguistics/

*Recent publications:* Coats, S., Basile, A., Morin, C. & Fuchs, R. (to appear). *The YouTube Corpus of Singapore English Podcasts*. /English World-Wide/ Fuchs, R. et al. (to appear). *Non-standard morphosyntactic variation in L2 English varieties world-wide: A corpus-based study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384125000737*. /Lingua/. Fuchs, R., Wiltshire, C. & Sarmah, P. (to appear). *The role of English in the linguistic ecology of Northeast India https://www.academia.edu/125365118/The_role_of_English_in_the_linguistic_ecology_of_Northeast_India*. In P. Siemund, et al. (Eds.), /World Englishes in their Local Multilingual Ecologies/. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Lange, C., & Fuchs, R. (to appear). *English in India*. In R. Hickey & K. Burridge (Eds.), /New Cambridge History of the English Language/. Cambridge: CUP. Fuchs, R. (2025). *Influencing people around the globe - The linguistic expression of persuasion across varieties of English worldwide* https://www.academia.edu/107491904/Influencing_people_around_the_globe_The_linguistic_expression_of_persuasion_across_varieties_of_English_worldwide_In_Dayter_Daria_and_Sofia. In D. Dayter, & S. Rüdiger (Eds.), /Manipulation, Influence, and Deception: The Changing Landscape of Persuasive Language/, 135-156. Cambridge: CUP.