Publikationen

(Dis-)Harmony. Amplifying Voices in Polyphone Cultural Productions

Julia Andres, Brian Rozema, Anne Schröder, 2020.

The present volume investigates the representation and use of multilingualism, language variation in English and other languages in a variety of media and cultural production (stand-up comedy shows, drag shows, musical genres, TV series, sports commentary, to name some). Scholars from various disciplines – from literary or cultural studies, from linguistics, language teaching, and media studies – discuss a (dis-)harmony of voices, identity formation, (media)representation, power distribution and awareness. They look at the (linguistic) representations of (marginalized) groups or communities in films, TV series, novels, songs etc. and some include the analysis of the language(s) and language varieties used. They discuss the visibility, agency, empowerment, stereotyping or ridiculing of different social groups and treat issues of authenticity, (self-)identity formation, style-shifting, audiences, media types and genres. With this, the present volume explores and expands the concept of polyphony as it was famously employed by Mikhail Bakhtin in 1929.

Analogy, Copy, and Representation

Schröder, Anne and Christoph Haase, 2018.

This volume explores issues in analogy, analogy making, analogy interpreting, and analogy use at the confluence of disciplines such as linguistics, cultural studies, literary studies, and their intersectional disciplines. It represents samples of the state of the art in interdisciplinary analogy research, providing a dialogue between the aforementioned fields, which illuminates relevant aspects of the phenomenon of analogy and thus creates a mutual benefit between and across the different domains. Hence, this volume represents a genuinely interdisciplinary endeavour that adds to and transcends research goals in the cognitive sciences such as the nature of causation, the emergence of structure (in language, culture, and literature) and the evolution of structure-building aspects in language acquisition. This collection of articles thus contributes to a transdisciplinary understanding of analogy, analogy making, analogy inter­preting and analogy use and will inspire many to continue thinking differently about (and with) analogies.

Exploring the Periphery

Stefanie Quakernack, Till Meister, Diana Fulger, Nathan Devos, 2017.

This interdisciplinary collection of contributions aims at exploring and challenging the concept of periphery from various angles and in different fields of Applied Linguistics, Language Teaching, Literary and Cultural Studies. As the "writing back" paradigm of Postcolonial Studies illustrates, the concept of periphery still implies the existence of a center, which generates and sustains binary oppositions and hierarchical structures. In times of global migration and transnational mobility, the concept of periphery needs to be renegotiated in order to make sense of the newly emergent dichotomies in the linguistic, cultural and literary spheres.

Migration in Context: Literature, Culture and Language

Hartner, Marcus and Marion Schulte, 2016.

Migration is an intrinsic part of human history. The movements of people across various types of borders have contributed to shape the nations, languages, and cultures of this planet and still continue to do so to the present day. Due to the many forms, facets, and the long history of migratory movements, the academic investigation of migration processes goes far beyond the scope of any single discipline and needs to be conducted from multiple perspectives. This volume contributes to the study of migration by presenting diverse approaches and case studies from British and American literary and cultural studies, linguistics, and didactics. By drawing on a rich assortment of topics, methods, and theories from these different fields of research, it aims to illustrate the conceptual diversity inherent in the study of migration, but also highlights the many cross-disciplinary affinities and connections between approaches in these different areas of research.

Codification, Canons, and Curricula

Anne Schröder, Ulrich Busse, Ralf Schneider, 2012.

Language, literature and culture develop according to different sets of rules, and it is the task of linguistics, literary studies and cultural studies to describe both the regularities and the changes in these fields. On the one hand, this description unearths standardization mechanisms that influence practical language application and aesthetic production. On the other hand, although normative and prescriptive statements tend to be avoided to a large extent in the descriptively-aligned philological disciplines, these fields of academic study still contribute to standardization. They implicitly or explicitly define the standards for the 'correct' usage of language or 'good' aesthetic design, for example in reference materials and with the help of other instruments and institutions. Moreover, they contribute to the perpetuation of standards by way of their influence on the curricula of schools and universities.

The goal of the present volume is to examine the developments and functions of such prescriptive and descriptive tendencies by comparing the similarities and differences in the philological sub-disciplines (linguistics, literary studies and cultural studies, as well as didactics) and their respective subject matters.

Several theoretical approaches, models and methods are presented by specialists from different disciplines, opening up new perspectives for further inter- and transdisciplinary research and new vistas on school and university curricula.

Remembering and Forgetting: Memory in Images and Texts

Wilfried Raussert, Bond Love, Julia Andres, Stephen Joyce, 2010.

This book is a collection of essays devoted to the representation and politics of memory in cultural texts. How individuals and communities use memory to navigate the current global situation is the subject of many of the essays collected in this volume, while other essays contextualize these strategies by examining functions and interrogations of memory in earlier geopolitical environments. Taken as a whole, they form a multifaceted exploration of how various forms of memory are discursively constructed and nego­tiated in literature, art, media, or other cultural modes of representation. The collection addresses a wide array of texts and cultural contexts.

Cultures in Process: Encounter and Experience

Gramley, Stephan and Ralf Schneider 2009.

Cultures in Process: Encounter and Experience is a wide-ranging collection of essays from the more traditional areas of literary, cultural, and linguistic scholarship, but also from the performance arts, ethnography, gender studies, musicology, sociology, and psychology. The first section deals with the central question of process, and provides examples of how it may be seen as evolving. The second set looks at forms and experiences of cultural encounter that shape social practices and modes of cultural expression, be they those of expatriates in India and Spain, musical traditions in China and performance art in Brazil, or the clash of tradition and modernity in sexual practices in the Arabian Gulf region. This followed by cultural encounter from the vantage point of linguistics: language and culture in intercultural encounters, code-switching among first and second generation bilinguals, and the connections between identity, language, and culture in translation. The analysis of literature is at the center of the fourth selection of contributions: encounter and identity formation in the Indian diaspora, conflicting memories of home and cultural heritage with the new cultural memory, and identity formation in the context of socially dictated racial prejudices. The final papers provide case studies of cultural processes at multifarious levels - including the ways in which South African concepts and practices of "indigenous" culture have been subject to (re-)definition in a changing political context, but also the meaning of personhood and identity when normative concepts are called into question by illnesses such as Alzheimer's, and, finally, two possible concepts of dynamic process in culture as we read Carlyle against the foil of Warburg.

Bielefeld Introduction to Applied Linguistics. A Course Book.

Gramley, Stephan and Vivian Gramley, 2008.

The Bielefeld Introduction to Applied Linguistics is designed to provide a wide-ranging and substantial overview of the field for beginning students. It comprises twenty-seven well-documen- ted contributions based on some of the most salient topics in research and teaching done at the Department of Linguistics and Literature at Bielefeld University.

In four major sections this book looks at questions involving the user/learner (teaching/learning aids; learning processes and methods of gauging them); mental processes (language acquisition and loss); studies involving the linguistic code (metaphor, translation, empirical methods, approaches to texts); and the language community (bilingualism and code-switching, language policy, pragmatics, speaker groups and their languages).

Each contribution offers - on sometimes varying levels of detail - a starting point for the young student and provides a useful selection of literature for further reading. Many of the chapters include a selection of do-able exercises based on the material presented.