2025

Date & Place

When: 23. September 2025, 12:15-13:45

Where: Unitobler, F-122

Language is central to legal processes. Interpreters mediate meaning when there is a mismatch between the language of the court and lay participants’ (defendants or witnesses) linguistic competences. Yet, in Denmark most interpreters are untrained, and several reports argue that the quality of legal interpreting is low (e.g. Rigsrevisonen 2018). This is a fundamental problem to the legal process, and to justice. But there is still very little known about what happens in interpreter-mediated court cases in Denmark – including how cases unfold linguistically and why things unfold in particular ways. In our project on courtroom interpreting (Karrebæk et al. 2024, Karrebæk 2023, Karrebæk & Kirilova 2023, 2021, Karrebæk & Sørensen 2021), we were interested in describing, understanding and theorizing what happened in court, and also in looking at this from different perspectives. Yet, our sociolinguistic approach did not align with the interests of the legal system, which concerned whether it is true that the quality of legal interpreting is low. In this talk I will show examples of what we discovered in court, relate it to larger societal discussions about legal interpreting, and discuss how and why we ended up engaging with the notion of ‘quality’.

Date & Place

When: 16. October 2025, 16:15-18:00

Where: Unitobler, F002

Date & Place

When: 21 october 2025, 16:15-17:45

Where: Unitobler, F005

This talk draws on video-ethnography to provide a close examination of the everyday working practices of ambulant vendors working along Copacabana Beach. It investigates how these workers exercise tactical agency (de Certeau 1984) as they negotiate the restrictive physical and social boundaries  of the beach in their pursuit of livelihood. The analysis introduces the notion of bounding—conceived as the situated navigation of social and material limits—and makes use of the metaphor of the fresta (“interstice”) to capture the creative openings vendors exploit in real time.

By tracing how vendors mobilize a repertoire of communicative resources, the study shows how they calibrate mobile, visual, material and verbal modalities to enhance visibility to potential customers while simultaneously reducing exposure to public space regulators. The findings highlight the interplay of sequential and overlapping modes of action, revealing how these practices are adapted to the shifting spatiotemporal conditions of work on the beach.

In doing so, the talk contributes to debates on language and agency by demonstrating how multimodal communicative practices serve as tools for confronting and manoeuvring within systemic inequalities.

Date & Place

When: 27 October 2025, 10:15-12:00

Where: Unitobler, F012

The concept of place is becoming an object of increased theoretical debate, and trends within sociology and social geography view place as both outcome of historical processes, and as a situated achievement of social agents (Cresswell 2004, Massey 1995, Tuan 1991). In terms of language, this means that linguistic practice not only reflects but also defines or constructs place (Britain, 2010, 2013, Johnstone, 2011). Consequently, the meaning of a place is neither stable across time nor across individuals or communities, and the linguistic practices of people who in certain ways claim attachment to the place may or may not be similar. This complexification of the concept of place makes it increasingly difficult for sociolinguists and dialectologists to “measure” the meaning of place using traditional methods, and the use of ethnographic methods has become more common. In this talk I present linguistic ethnographic work that I and colleagues have done over the years focusing on the small Danish island of Bornholm (Maegaard et al 2020, Maegaard & Karrebæk 2019, Karrebæk & Maegaard 2017, 2024). The talk combines theories and methods from different parts of sociolinguistics, specifically linguistic ethnography, dialectology and semiotic landscape studies, to offer insights into processes of place-making on the island as well as elsewhere, and involving both local Bornholmians, tourists and restaurant guests, all in different ways participating in constructing “Bornholm”. In the talk I discuss how “Bornholm” is indexed through different semiotic resources; bits of dialect, photos, written names of meals in a menu, oral narratives, a flag, specific glasses with sandblasted images and more, depending on the context. Furthermore, what “Bornholm” means changes both with scale and context. I begin the talk on the island of Bornholm, focusing on local youth, and end it in a small restaurant in Brooklyn, NYC, where (mainly) American guests enjoy a ”Bornholmian Evening”.

Date & Place

When: 6 November 2025, 16:15-18:00

Where: Unitobler, F002

Date & Place

When: 18 November 2025, 16:15-17:30

Where: Unitobler, F-105

What do gay voices sound like? What are the feminine characteristics of a voice, and what do trans voices tell us about our understanding of gender?

This lecture examines the relationship between voice, gender and sexuality from a socio-phonetic and queer linguistic perspective. It begins with an overview of existing research, which is limited for German, especially when compared to English-speaking countries. The lecture focuses on the construction of stereotypical gay voices (cf. Vorberger 2024, Sörries-Vorberger i. E.) and on initial findings on trans voices in German. In addition to content-related and methodological questions, implications for scientific and social discourses on voice, gender and sexuality will also be discussed.

Date & Place

When: 1 December 2025, 10:15-11:30

Where: Unitobler, F012

As examples of the production of public "green narratives" (Kosativa, 2023), the aestheticization of urban spaces as part of 'nature' are increasingly prevalent. In this presentation, I will examine contemporary realisations of urban flora and their potential effects on producing apparently sustainable spaces. In addressing the semiotic dimension of urban planting, I aim to expand semiotic landscape research and contribute to studies of environmental discourse. The empirical focus of my presentation will be data collected during fieldwork in five German cities (Rathingen, Essen, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Cologne) which I analyse using multimodal tools from social semiotics; the analysis is also informed by perspectives from the wider interdisciplinary field of environmental studies. Specifically, I organize my analysis around three ways flora are typically realized in urban space: (1) images of flora, (2) plastic plants, and (3) organic greenery. Ultimately, this study considers the extent to which these flora-associated emplacements frame and visualize sustainability by mimicking nature in idealised and often aestheticized ways.

Bio

Laura Imhoff is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Anglophone Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. She previously studied Sociology and German Studies at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Her current research focuses on climate change discourses and the semiotics of (un)sustainable place-making.

Date & Place

When: 4 December 2025, 10:15-12:00

Where: Unitobler, F-121

Date & Place

When: 16 December 2025, 14:15-16:00

Where: Unitobler, F004

When & Where

6th November 2025, 9:45-14:45, Room S201, UniS

7th November 2025, 10:50-16:15, Room 501, Mail Building

On the 6th and 7th of november 2025, the Department of English and the Spanish Institute will hold a two-day "Sticker Conference". The conference includes talks from scholars across the University of Bern and other European universities.
Stickers can be used to create meaning, contributing to linguistic and semiotic landscapes. Apart from sociolinguistics, communication studies and linguistic anthropology study this new media form which challenges the clear division between the online and offline world.

MA students are eligible to receive ECTS for full or partial attendance of the event. 

Date & Time

When: 4 March 2025, 16:15-17:45h

Where: Unitobler, F-112

Zoom: https://unibe-ch.zoom.us/j/7931254771

Scholarship on neoliberalism has shown how employability discourses compel students to invest in English. What remains underexplored is the role of affect in these processes, and how it works to anchor these discourses deep within people’s subjectivities. Drawing on ethnographic data from an English-teaching NGO in Delhi, I explore the affective economy of English in India in order to demonstrate how and why English becomes desirable, for whom, and with what consequences. In doing so, I map the webs of complex logics and actors that not only discursively (re)produce English as a thing to be desired, but also draw boundaries around who can and should desire it.

Bio

Katy Highet is lecturer in English Language & TESOL at the University of the West of Scotland, where she is currently engaged in a Carnegie Trust funded project entitled ‘Alternative spaces of ESOL: an exploratory ethnography of English Language Teaching and activism in Glasgow’.  She was previously an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at UCL Institute of Education. As a Critical Sociolinguist, her work focuses on language, political economy, inequality and activism in both India and the UK. Her work has been published in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, the Journal of Sociolinguistics, the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, and Language and Communication.

When & Where

Date: 15th of April 2025, time tba

Place: Room 220, Mittelstrasse 43

This guest lecture is part of the BeLing Colloquium 2025.

Abstract

This talk explores multimodal metapragmatics, extending traditional metapragmatic analysis beyond language to broader communicative ideologies. Beginning with a conceptual overview of metapragmatics—spanning reflexive, reportive, and nomic functions (Silverstein 2021)—I examine how these frameworks apply not only to language but also to other semiotic systems such as gesture, writing, and media choice. The second half of the talk presents a case study on the metapragmatic discourse surrounding Elon Musk’s Nazi salute during the celebration of Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration. By analyzing a corpus of 2,000 German social media comments, I demonstrate how different actors engage in metapragmatic framing to construct, debate, and strategically reinterpret the meaning of Musk’s gesture. The findings reveal how far-right discourse employs “metapragmatic gaslighting” (Donzelli 2023)—shifting contextual frames to render even historically highly enregistered gestures like the Nazi salute ambiguous and contestable. This analysis sheds light on contemporary far-right discursive strategies and highlights the importance of a multimodal approach to metapragmatic inquiry.

Donzelli, Aurora (2023): On Metapragmatic Gaslighting: Truth and Trump’s Epistemic Tactics in a Plague Year. Signs & Society 11 (2): 173–200. 

Silverstein, Michael (2021): The dialectics of indexical semiosis: scaling up and out from the “actual” to the “virtual”. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 272: 13–45.

Date & Time

When: 13 May 2025, 16:15-18:00h.

Where: Fabrikstrasse 6, Room 102.

Zoom:

Afterwards, an apéro will be held.

In this presentation, I analyze Il Memoriale della Shoah, the memorial of the victims of the Shoah in Milan, which was inaugurated in 2013 and was turned into a night shelter for destitute migrants in 2015. To understand the rhetoric and politics of the Memorial, I bring together the notions of affective practices (Wetherell 2012), découpages du temps (lit. slices of time) (Foucault 1986) and multidirectional memory (Rothberg 2009). This analytic approach allows me to examine the nonlinear shape of remembering, the dialectic relationships between the spatialization of time and the temporalization of space, the ways in which emotions are brought into being semiotically in context, and the ethical questions that these feelings raise. Through detailed multimodal and affective analysis of the affordances of the built environment and its soundscape, the curation of the Memorial, the contextualization of three guided tours (two online and one in situ) and politicized commentary on the Memorial’s decision to shelter refugees, this presentation illustrates the multi-layered character of the relationship between space and time – one in which the past, the present and the future partly overlap and mobilize political action.

Bio

Tommaso M. Milani is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Applied Linguistics and Jewish Studies at Penn State; he is also affiliated to the African Studies Program and the Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Before joining Penn State, he held positions at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is currently working on a project about the politics of collective remembering, focusing in particular on the commemoration of the victims of the Shoah in Italy and Sweden. He also collaborates with the Swedish Yiddishist Sarah Schulman (Dos Nisele Förlag,Stockholm) on a project about Yiddish in Sweden.