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Language, Society and Digital Life

The last few decades have not only witnessed the emergence of new digital genres but also an upsurge in digital technologies in the study of language that PhD students are expected to master. Our doctoral college is geared towards developing skills that enable our PhD students to use innovative digital technologies and to study medially shaped language with the goal of producing research at an internationally competitive level. The doctoral college unites linguists active in three disciplines: sociolinguistics, multimodal text/discourse linguistics, and language acquisition research. It exclusively promotes work rooted in authentic interactional settings. In the college, we understand the ‘digital’ in three principled ways:

(1) The digital as method may range from new ways of collecting data to innovative digital methods of transcribing, automatic coding and analysing language in spoken or written form as well as the compilation of semiotically rich corpora, data sharing and online data dissemination.

(2) The digital as object of study focuses on the structure, function of, user competence in and attitudes towards new forms of medially shaped communication, such as texting, vlogging, etc.

(3) The digital as research result concerns digital tools based on language data, such as devices for querying and visualising data (e.g. interactive dialect maps or linguistic databases), apps to search existing corpora in novel ways, that help track language development, or digital learning tools and software programs for language learners.

Our doctoral college offers a stimulating environment for promising doctoral students, in which they experience outstanding supervision and individual guidance for every aspect of their project and in which they can expand their academic networks. By fusing three relatable linguistic disciplines and firmly anchoring them in the digital linguistics paradigm, we aim to build a working environment which produces invaluable synergies in approaches, thinking and project design. The college unites faculty members who have had much co-operative experience, who relate and interact well and who create a friendly and efficient collaborative environment that is firmly based on a civil and collegial code of conduct.

> Admission of new DSP members

  • Fellows

    Beatrice Colcuc
    Topic: Grenzen im Kontinuum? Sprecherperzeption und -repräsentationen der Sprachvariation im Dolomitengebiet (Romance Languages and Literatures)
    Main supervisor: Matthias Heinz

     Laura Fischlhammer
    Topic: Kommunikative Muster in historischer Briefkorrespondenz (German Language and Literature)
    Main supervisor: Stephan Elspaß

    Eva Fuchs
    Topic: … owa ba da matura miassma hochdeitsch ren! Wahrnehmungen und Einstellungen zum mündlichen Erstsprach(en)gebrauch in der österreichischen Schule – die Perspektive von Schüler/innen und ihren Lehrer/innen (German Language and Literature)
    Main supervisor: Stephan Elspaß
    Co-supervisor: Monika Dannerer

    Birgit Füreder
    Topic: Processing Verbal Periphrases in Romance (Romance Languages and Literatures)
    Main supervisor: Matthias Heinz
    Co-supervisor: Dietmar Roehm

    Eva Valentina Gatterbauer (German Language and Literature)
    Main supervisor: Irmtraud Kaiser
    Co-supervisor: Andrea Ender

    David Gschösser
    Topic: /kx/ in den deutschen Dialekten Österreichs (German Language and Literature)
    Main supervisor: Stephan Elspaß
    Co-supervisor: Eva Reinisch

     Sabrina Guhe
    Topic: Muster in der Online-Beschwerdekommunikation (German Language and Literature)
    Main supervisor: Stephan Elspaß

    Yooree Kim
    Topic: Erwerb gesprochener Sprache in DaF/DaZ (German Language and Literature)
    Main supervisor: Andrea Ender
    Co-supervisor: Stephan Elspaß

    Dirk Köning
    Topic: Akkommodation bei im dt. Sprachraum lebenden Hispanophonen (Romance Languages and Literatures)
    Main supervisor: Bernhard Pöll
    Co-supervisor: Johanna Wolf

    Bradley Mackay
    Topic: The Heterogeneity of sex-based categories: Phonetic variation in gay and straight speech (English and American Studies)
    Main supervisor: Erik Schleef
    Co-supervisors: Danielle Turton, Thomas Kaltenbacher

    Esme Richardson-Owen
    Topic: Challenging (linguistic) sensory hierarchies: „synaesthetic adjective-noun pairs“ – an embodied image-schematic phenomenon realised linguistically through adjectival unboundedness and scalarity, rather than metaphorical transfer from lower to higher sensory domains (English and American Studies)
    Main supervisor: Hartmut Stöckl

    Evelyn Roth
    Topic: The influence of language attitudes on credibility and pain assessment in medical contexts: Evidence from Northern Ireland (English and American Studies)
    Main supervisor: Erik Schleef
    Co-supervisor: Rebekah Wegener

    Yvonne Rusch
    Topic: „Sprachgewand(t)“ – Spracheinstellungen und Sprachverwendung im Schulunterricht – Ein subjektiver und objektiver Zugang mit Fokus auf Lehrendensprache (German Language and Literature)
    Main supervisor: Stephan Elspaß
    Co- supervisor: Irmtraud Kaiser

    Dominik Wallner
    Topic: Language change in real and apparent time. A panel study on sound change in Ulrichsberg, Upper Austria (German Language and Literature)
    Main supervisor: Stephan Elspaß
    Co-supervisor: Hannes Scheutz

    Elisabeth Weiß
    Topic: The contribution of swear words to the construction of authenticity in American gangsta rap lyrics from 1992-2022 (Anglistik und Amerikanistik)
    Supervisor: Erik Schleef

    Julia Weißenböck
    Topic: SPEAK OUT: Boosting Speaking and 21st Century Skills Through Speaking Vlogs in Lower Secondary Schools in Austria (English and American Studies)
    Main supervisor: Simone Pfenninger
    Co-supervisor: Markus Oppolzer

    Karolina Wieserová
    Topic: Unbelebte Objekte mit differentieller Objektmarkierung im Tschechischen (Slavonic Studies)
    Main supervisor: Imke Mendoza
    Co-supervisor: Ilja Seržant

    Karoline Wurzer
    Topic: Wahrnehmung von fremdsprachlichem und muttersprachlichem Akzent im Fremdspracherwerb (Romance Languages and Literatures)
    Main supervisor: Johanna Wolf
    Co-supervisor: Matthias Heinz

  • Faculty

    Univ.-Prof. Dr. Erik Schleef (DSP Coordinator)
    English and American Studies

    Univ.-Prof. Dr. Hartmut Stöckl (DSP Coordinator)
    English and American Studies

    Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stephan Elspaß (Faculty Member)
    German Language and Literature

    Univ.-Prof. Dr. Andrea Ender (Faculty Member)
    German Language and Literature

    Univ.-Prof. Dr. Matthias Heinz (Faculty Member)
    Romance Languages and Literatures

    Univ. Ass. Dr. Irmtraud Kaiser (Faculty Member)
    German Language and Literature

    Univ.-Prof. Dr. Imke Mendoza (Faculty Member)
    Slavonic Studies

    Assoz. Prof. Dr. Simon Pickl (Faculty Member)
    German Language and Literature

    Univ.-Prof. Dr. Bernhard Pöll (Faculty Member)
    Romance Languages and Literatures

  • DSP Board of Experts

       Univ.-Prof. Dr. Simone Pfenninger (English and American Studies) – Universität Zürich UZH

       Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johanna Wolf (Romance Languages and Literatures) – LMU München

    Accompanying scientific experts

    Dr. Thomas Kaltenbacher (English and American Studies)

    Dr. Peter Mauser (German Language and Literature)

    Dr. Isabel Repiso (Romance Languages and Literatures)

    Dr. Rebekah Wegener (English and American Studies)

  • Successfully completed theses

    Susanne Behensky
    Topic: Die Kasusvariation bei Objekten von Verben des Wartens, Bittens und Forderns im Russischen (Slavonic Studies)
    Main supervisor: Imke Mendoza
    Co-supervisor: Thomas Krisch

    Jennifer Konzett
    Topic: Interferenzen beim Simultandolmetschen in die Muttersprache aus linguistischer und psycholinguistischer Perspektive mit speziellem Fokus auf dolmetschdidaktischen Aspekten. Eine empirische Untersuchung anhand der Sprachenpaare Deutsch-Spanisch und Spanisch-Deutsch (Romance Languages and Literatures)
    Main supervisor: Bernhard Pöll
    Co-supervisor: Martina Behr

    Jana Pflaeging
    Topic: Change and Continuity in Multimodal Genres. A Text- and Media-Linguistic History of the Popular Science Journal ‘National Geographic’ (English and American Studies)
    Main supervisor: Hartmut Stöckl
    Co-supervisor: Alexander Brock

    Eugen Unterberger
    Topic: Einstellungen zu sprachlichen Varietäten und ihre Veränderbarkeit. Auswirkungen von schulischen Maßnahmen zur Bewusstmachung von stereotypen Bewertungsmustern (German Language and Literature)
    Main supervisor: Andrea Ender
    Co-supervisors: Irmtraud Kaiser, Stephan Elspaß

    Mason Wirtz
    Topic: Sociolinguistic competence in adult second language acquisition. Dynamics of linguistic, socioaffective and cognitive factors in sociolinguistic development (German Language and Literature)
    Main supervisor: Andrea Ender
    Co-supervisors: Irmtraud Kaiser, Simone Pfenninger

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