phd project - nina-maria fronhofer

Although British English and German discourse have been the focus of quite a few comparative studies reporting on pragmatic contrasts between these two languages, such as differences in the linguistic realization of evaluation or intensification, or stylistic contrasts, such as a differential use of modal verbs, contrastive studies with respect to the linguistic realization of emotions in British English and German discourse are quite rare. Moreover, only recently, the immediate linguistic context in which emotion concepts are realized has been taken into account.

The major research goal of this PhD project is therefore to pinpoint similarities and differences in the linguistic realization of emotion concepts such as ANGER or JOY across British English and German Discourse, more precisely written personal narratives. At the same time, it reviews and extends the Emotion Event model, a cognitive linguistic emotion model that explicitly accommodates the immediate linguistic context of emotion concepts.

Qualitative and quantitative analyses are based on a synchronous, near-to-real-time corpus, the contrastive and comparable AWE-Corpus (Augsburg Corpus of Written Emotion Narratives), which has been compiled (2012-2013) for the purpose of the research project and which comprises 256 personal narratives overall.

Fronhofer, N.-M. submitted. “My ANGER was justified surely?” Markers of epistemic (un-) certainty in English and German Emotion Events.

Fronhofer, N.-M. 2018. “So angry or slightly irritated of sorts?” ANGER events in British English and German. Proceedings of the interdisciplinary workshop “Emotion Concepts in Use”, Heinrich-Heine University (SFB 991/DFG: The Structures of Representations in Language,Cognition and Science), Düsseldorf, Germany. Peter Lang.

Fronhofer, N.-M-.2015. Nearly a bit angry or just so happy? – Intensifiers as contextualization cues. Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliquée, numéro spécial, t. 2, été 2015, 29-49.