In Progress

Dr. Heidrun Dorgeloh (homepage)
Narrativity and the evolution of genres in the professional domains

Abstract

The narrative is subject to research in both literary studies and linguistics, though linguists tend to presuppose, rather than define, its constitutive properties. In most frameworks, narrative refers both to the linguistic and structural properties, the narrative mode, of a discourse as well as to the narrative text type, or genre, which a discourse instantiates. It is the narrative mode which establishes the relationship between such divergent forms of language use as oral conversational storytelling, on the one hand, and narratives in professional domains, on the other. Ultimately, many genres are in this sense also historically related. The theoretical concern of this project is a text-typological issue, which assumes processes of narrativisation, sometimes re-narrativisation, to be highly characteristic of the diachronic development of various English genres over the last three centuries. These processes also and very typically take place in non-fictional writing, such as in the language of science and of medicine, in particular. This research is meant to provide a deeper linguistic understanding of the narrative text type, open by its very nature to a variety of functions and therefore likely to occur in professional domains as well; at the same time, it sheds light on the functions and dynamics of various areas of professional communication.

Completed

Dr. Anette Rosenbach 
The English Noun Phrase: Gradience and Change (supported by a DFG Grant)
Abstract

Dr. Alexander Bergs
The expression of futurity in present-day English
Abstract