2012 Grimm Lecture

Tuesday, 23 October 2012 at 7 pm in HH 1106

This year's Grimm Lecture, the annual flagship event of the Waterloo Centre for German Studies, is given by Ruth Wodak. Ruth Wodak is a critical discourse analyst who has made extraordinary contributions to the field of applied linguistics in recent years. She is originally from Austria and currently Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University, the university with the strongest program in applied linguistics in the UK. Through her interdisciplinary research she is affiliated with a number of research groups at her university: Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, Centre for Language in Social Life, Cultural Political Economy Research Centre, Dynamics of Memories, Language, Ideology and Power Group (LIP).

In the 2012 Grimm Lecture, Ruth Wodak will talk about language change in Austrian German in the fields of education, media, and business. In her talk, she will show how different text genres - business reports, newspaper articles, the Austrian Press Agency’s news reports, and high school students’ German essays - underwent significant change between 1970 and 2010. She will show how the change of Austrian German is driven by change in genres, a change that is embedded in larger socio-political and global contexts.

The lecture and discussion will be followed by a reception. 

For a the poster see https://artsonline.uwaterloo.ca/wcgs/grimm-lecture-2012-recent-developments-post-war-austrian-german