PhD Courses in Denmark

Date and time:  25+26 March, and 2, 3 + 9 April 2025 from 9:00 to 16:00

In this five-day course (divided into 2+2+1 sessions), PhD-students will explore language in society from different perspectives and through different methods. They will be introduced to variation across time and space, multilingualism and language socialization, gender and language, and questions arising from doing sociolinguistic research in post-colonial contexts. Linguistic ethnography, approaches drawing on generative AI, diachronic analysis, discourse analysis and interaction analysis will be introduced. Participants will be asked to integrate some of the presented approaches with their own research in a small conference presentation.  

Academic Aim:
 - Participants will become familiar with various approaches to language in society and to linguistic variation and change
 - Participants will discuss how each of these approaches are useful for their own research
 - Participants will provide each other with qualified feedback on the potential of the new approaches to their research
 - Participants will present a provisional analysis, based on their own project, where they apply a selected approach from the course

Target group: 
PhD students from the humanities or the social sciences who have an interest in language, culture or society, or who use language as data and would like to explore the potential of this type of data

Course organisers: 
Martha Karrebæk, Professor, Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen
Pia Quist, Professor, Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen
Dorte Lønsmann, Associate Professor, Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Copenhagen
Kirsten A. Jeppesen Kragh, Head of studies, Associate Professor, Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Copenhagen

Additional course lecturers: 
Mirjam Schmuck,  Associate Professor, Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Copenhagen
Marie Maegaard, Professor, Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen
Kristine Køhler Mortensen, Associate Professor,  Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen
Magnus Pharao, Associate Professor, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen
 

PROGRAMME:

Day 1: Variation across time and space (Kirsten Kragh & Pia Quist, Engerom + NORS)
On the first day of the course, the participants are introduced to the study of linguistic variation across time and space. In the first part of the day, the focus is on the diachronic analysis of linguistic variation, on language change and stylistic variation, and on how the synchronic variation is both the cause and the locus of diachronic change. In the second part, we present theories and methods linked to research into the ways languages are thought to relate to places, from traditional sociolinguistics and dialectology that take location-stable speakers as representatives of authentic speech, to today's focus on mobility and language contact. 

Day 2: Multilingualism and language socialization (Dorte Lønsmann & Martha Karrebæk, Engerom + NORS)
The second course day will thematize the fields of multilingualism and language socialization by discussing our own work as well as the work of colleagues. We will exemplify different research questions and areas such as, e.g., corporate workplaces, play, public service interpreting, and foreign healthcare professionals. Methodologically we will introduce course participants to linguistic ethnography and its broad range of methods, incl. participant observation, interviews, recording, use of other materials (policy documents, media etc.) as well as interactional sociolinguistic analysis of interaction data.

Day 3: Gender and language (Mirjam Schmuck & Kristine K. Mortensen, Engerom + NORS)
On this course day, participants will be introduced to central theoretical concepts from feminist and critical theory that have gained momentum in recent language, gender and sexuality scholarship. We will discuss how such theorizations conceptualize the categories of gender and sexuality and how language is understood in relation to this. Moreover, we will explore some of the methods that scholars of this field use for analyzing how gender and sexuality are (re)produced and contested in discourse. Participants will also be introduced to different types of linguistic encoding of gender, i.e. natural gender languages (e.g. Danish, English) vs. grammatical gender languages (e.g. German, Spanish, French) and the impact of grammatical gender on the mental representations of women and men. We will also work with gender biases in new technologies (humans are biased but machines are worse). 

Day 4: Doing sociolinguistic research in postcolonial contexts (Marie Maegaard & Magnus Pharao Hansen, NORS + TORS)
Marie Maegaard and Magnus Pharao Hansen will give an introduction to perspectives on sociolinguistic work in postcolonial contexts. This will include such themes as how different socio-political contexts may offer different risks, challenges, and possibilities for language research, the roles of researcher positionality and reflexivity, questions of objectivity and activism in research, and issues of research ethics. Offering a selection of readings, they will discuss how postcolonial and critical perspectives have been important in their own research experiences, and they will invite participants to reflect on whether and how their own research could benefit from this.

Day 5: Conference Day
On this day we will meet for a conference where participants present a paper where they integrate one or more perspectives introduced during the course with their own research. There will be assigned discussants for the papers. 

Paper presentation and written preparation:
Paper presentation is mandatory. Please prepare a 15-minute oral presentation and handouts/slides. The material must be sent to the discussant on 6 April 2025 at the latest.

Language: English

ECTS: 5

Max. numbers of participants: 20

Registration: Please register via the link in the box no later than 29 January 2025.

Further information: For more information about the PhD course, please contact the PhD Administration (phd@hrsc.ku.dk).

Literature: TBA