Lara Portmann

Lara Portmann

Lara Portmann studied English and German Studies at the University of Bern. She is currently a PhD candidate in Language and Communication in the Department of English. Her PhD project investigates the language work of so-called UX (“user experience”) writers, those professional language workers who design the linguistic texts appearing at the interfaces of websites, mobile apps, and other software. This project, affiliated with the SNSF-funded project “Elite Creativities”, seeks to provide a critical sociolinguistic understanding of a new domain of (elite) language work.

Title of PhD Project

UX Writing as Audience Design: The Sociolinguistics of Digital Media Interfaces

Research Foci

language work/ers; critical sociolinguistics; language/semiotic ideologies; digital discourse studies; interface texts; cultural politics of technology; discourse ethnography; social semiotics