Mario Bisiada, PhD

I'm an Associate Professor and Serra Hunter Fellow in Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies at the Department of Translation and Language Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. My research interests are cross-linguistic and contrastive phenomena of language, discourse and translation.

I received my PhD for a corpus-based study of translation as a site of language contact, investigating whether translations from English influence language change in German. I have gone on to publish a range of articles on the linguistic influence of editors on the translated text, where I argue for a greater awareness of mediation stages in corpus studies of translated language. I've edited a volume entitled Empirical Studies in Translation and Discourse. Recently, I've also been working on corpus-assisted discourse studies of how current societal issues are constructed and framed through metaphors and hashtags across languages. For instance, I analyse how metaphors and hashtags are used to establish and maintain power relations in discourse across languages. I'm working on a project on the framing of migration. Read here my general approach to language study.

See below for my research interests, publications and work I supervise. To contact me, please use the buttons in the menu on the right.

About me

  • Associate Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra since 2021
  • PhD in Translation & Intercultural Studies
    University of Manchester, 2013
  • M.A. in Applied Translation Studies
    University of Leeds, 2010
  • B.A. (Hons) in English & Linguistics
    University of York, 2009
  • Co-editor at Translation and Multilingual NLP book series (LangSci Press)
  • Guest Editor, Discourses in the Age of Scarcity special issue of Languages
  • Walker in forests & mountains, where I take photos sometimes.
  • Tenure-Track Lecturer at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2015−2021
  • Assistant Lecturer at University of Kent, 2012−2014

Research

My approach to language and languaging

I take a heteroglossic view of language, that is, I consider any utterance as consisting of various social languages and voices, and as always referring to previous utterances as well as anticipating future ones. Following Bakhtinian thought, the integrational linguistics programme (R. Harris) and Critical Applied Linguistics (A. Pennycook), I see language as an abstraction of spatio-temporally unique communication events that are always inseparable from social context and ideology. I'm interested in language issues that arise from such a conception of language, for instance, phenomena of discourse and translation, always aiming to have a strong basis in critical theory, specifically social constructionist, feminist and post-structuralist approaches to power and ideology. I study language as a subversive and transformational practice to challenge established power relations. Languages and nations came into existence at the same time, reinforcing each other as imagined communities (Andersen), so the existence of nations, languages and linguistic communities as constructed, idealised concepts should be present in any linguistic analysis. I thus see language, or languaging, its use, learning and teaching, as a culturally productive activity, creating and not just reflecting social reality. The study of language I'm most interested in is thus driven by three main motives: First, it has a strong critical element, the desire to use research to achieve a change in society. Second, it is also empirical, drawing on corpora, though not limiting itself to corpus linguistics and its focus on method, but rather using corpora as a means to an end. And third, it must include a strong interdisciplinary aspect, seeing language as fundamentally related to disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, psychology and others.

Discourse studies of social issues and power relations

Cross-linguistic corpus-assisted discourse studies is a growing field of research, especially due to the increasing importance of social media for politics and society and the availability of social media corpora. I'm interested in how political and social issues are constructed, driven and represented through linguistic devices such as hashtags and metaphors and how these practices work to establish and maintain power relations in society.
Most recently, I have analysed Olaf Scholz's Zeitenwende policy statement from 27 February 2022 using a method based in Bakhtinian dialogism and Appraisal theory. In this paper, published in Critical Discourse Studies, I analyse the interplay of discourses in this speech to study how the radical armament programme in Germany is justified as a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I have published two conceptual articles, where I reflect on the role of discourse on social media and some discursive structures of exclusion (published in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications) that were apparent during the pandemic in Germany, Spain and other countries. I argue that discursive struggle was often constructed along ideological lines, while the role of class conflict was ignored, which contributed to the social polarisation that was perceived by many across countries (article in Media and Communication).
I have collaborated in an article published in Perspectives that applies the Discourse Dynamics Framework to the study of metaphor in translation to show how women are represented in a classic Chinese novel. I'm also currently working on a chapter on investigating metaphor and representation with corpora for the forthcoming Analysing representation: A corpus and discourse textbook.
In a corpus-assisted study of German and English newspapers, published in Discourse & Society, I argue that the expression having done one's homework is a structural metaphor and an understatement, presenting complex issues in an oversimplifying manner. I show that the metaphor (not) doing homework is used to refer to economic issues and has thus become a regular instrument in asserting relations of power and authority in political discourse.
I have also published a chapter where I study the #MeToo hashtag, analysing its regular collocates and the evaluative stance displayed towards it in Twitter discourse across languages. I find that #MeToo seems to be talked about in more negative terms in German tweets compared to English and Spanish, as shown by a qualitative analysis of evaluative author stance.
Along with my PhD student Xiang Huang, I have co-authored an article in CADAAD Journal analysing how Chinese media discourse constructs for itself an authoritative position, educating about obesity as a national health issue. This happens mainly along traditional collectivist lines using war and journey metaphors, but also appealing to more neoliberal, individualist attitudes with financial metaphors.

Blog publications

From soldiers to scapegoats: Why blaming citizens in the pandemic may help extremist parties (4 November 2020, Discover Society)
“While the beginning of the pandemic was marked by warlike discourse, constructing a situation of an ‘all-bets-are-off, anything-goes approach to emerging victorious’, addressing citizens as ‘soldiers’ to rally them together to ‘fight’ the ‘invisible enemy’, the discourses surrounding the ‘second wave’ have little to do with community and more with mutual recrimination. Having left war metaphors behind, politicians, helped by a largely sensationalist media, pit people against each other, identifying particular groups such as migrants, youths or ‘deniers” and placing blame on them for each surge in cases.”

Aus den Augen, aus dem Sinn? (8 April 2020, Der Freitag)
Die Verwendung von „räumlicher“ statt „sozialer“ Distanzierung unterstützt die Illusion, man könne Menschen mittels sozialer Medien nah bleiben. Eine Sprachanalyse zu social distancing.

Les metàfores de guerra durant la Covid-19: un recurs enverinat (7 April 2020, Pensem)
L'ús de llenguatge bel·licita per gestionar la crisi empeny les societats democràtiques envers l'autoritarisme. En comptes de parlar d'un «enemic» que ens ataca, es pot entendre el virus com un procés, semblant a un riu.

Corona, Lockdowns, and civil liberties: why participation and debate is important (20 March 2020, Discover Society)
“As a linguist, for instance, I’m interested in the language used in the current discourse. The corona crisis is interesting in this respect, not just because previously uncommon phrases have entered our daily vocabulary basically overnight (“social distancing”, “self-isolation”, “flatten the curve”), but also with respect to the metaphors used to talk about the crisis. The coronavirus has so far mainly been framed in terms of warfare metaphors.”

Eine Metapher, sie zu knechten (23 October 2018, Der Freitag)
Die Benutzung der Metapher “Hausaufgaben machen” suggeriert ungleiche Machtverhältnisse und ersetzt Debatte durch moralische Verpflichtung. So fördert sie den Populismus.

Editorial Intervention in Translation

When we talk about phenomena of translated language, we usually equate translated language with the language we find in translated books, magazines, newspapers or other such published translations. What we often forget is that in the production of translated documents, there are many intermediate stages such as revision, editing or proofreading where the language in the text is changed, sometimes significantly. While some phenomena like sentence splitting are caused by both translators and editors alike (see my article in Applied Linguistics), I also show in this book chapter that translators and editors are linguistic actors that are guided by noticeably different purposes. On the one hand, they both make extensive changes to nominalisations (see my article in The Translator), which I have shown in this article published in Perspectives to happen especially when the nominalisation is postmodified, for instance by genitive attributes. On the other hand, editors also eliminate passive constructions from translations, especially when the verb is in the past tense (article published in Across Languages and Cultures). With respect to a proposed “mediation effect”, it seems that translating and editing are rather different activities. Thus, I argue for a greater inclusion of unedited texts in translation corpora (see my article published in Target).
Most recently, this research has been extended including multivariate methods in a paper given at the First Workshop on Modelling Translation.

This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity through my participation in the MODEVIGTRAD project (2016−2018).

Frames and narratives of translation and of migration in Europe

This project seeks to advance research on the role of translation as a key mechanism of migration control and on the study of cross-linguistically existent discourse patterns. The main research objectives are

  1. to identify frames of migration and of translation in contact zones of migration in Spain and Germany, and to investigate whether particular frames can be observed cross-linguistically, which would imply the existence of cross-nationally identifiable discourse patterns or narratives on migration
  2. to analyse how these frames shape narratives of migration and of translation that are observable in both individual agents working in contact zones of migration and in organisational processes of translation in those zones

While extensive scholarly work exists on how immigration is framed in the media, it is with the recent rise of populism in Europe that the language employed by politicians and echoed in the media is increasingly becoming a pan-European topic of both interest and concern. Conservative parties increasingly adopt extreme right-wing terminology, thus shifting the limits of acceptability further and further towards a xenophobic consensus. Discursive means of manipulation or presenting subjective opinion as objective truths have become frequent strategies.
While the media play a key role in shaping the discourse on immigration and determining which frames are used and perpetuated, much work remains to be done to investigate how particular frames are introduced and established, and especially how this shapes a cross-linguistic, pan-European discourse. Recent calls to fund research within EU Horizon 2020 programme have placed emphasis on the discourse around the concept of migration and its socio-economic effects on host societies, such as distribution and impact of migration, migrant integration and education, or mobility patterns and security risks, among others. However, the centrality of language, and as a result of translation as an act of mediation that allows migrants to navigate their environment and fully participate in everyday life has been ignored. These approaches to the study of migration and its relationship to language are central to understanding migration processes within the European Union from a geopolitical perspective.
The specific objectives to be addressed by this project are:

  1. to identify through quantitative and contrastive data analysis the most recurrent frames on migration and translation to examine the connection between these two concepts
  2. to conduct a qualitative analysis of author stance and positioning towards migration in those recurrent frames
  3. to identify, through ethnographic methods of data collection and qualitative content analysis, public narratives of migration and of translation in the three areas mentioned above, and to evaluate the extent to which frames identified in RO2 shape such narratives
  4. to establish a connection between narratives of migration and of translation, and evaluate the extent to which such narratives contribute to the use of acts of translation as key strategic tools for control of migration

The Frames and Narratives of Translation and of Migration in Europe (FANTAME) research project is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (PID2019-107971GA-I00, 2020−2024).

This project is further funded by a postdoctoral grant from Pompeu Fabra University's inter- and trans-disciplinary Planetary Wellbeing initiative.

Language contact in translation and language change

Translation as a site of language contact can play a role in language change. I'm interested in the effects that the contact of two languages both in the mind of the translator and in that of the reader can have on each other. In my PhD project, I have concentrated on the analysis of parataxis and hypotaxis in English−German translation, which has found some evidence for a diachronic decrease of hypotactic constructions in causal (article published in Languages in Contrast) and concessive clauses (article published in Text & Talk) in translated language, although this trend is not corroborated in non-translated language. As I report in those articles, there does seem to be a trend towards a greater use of sentence-initial concessive conjunctions in German business articles, which may well have been affected by language contact in translation.

Publications

Here is a complete list of my publications sorted by research topic, along with the publication details. To download any paper, just click on the title.

Books

Book cover

Empirical studies in translation and discourse (2021)

“This volume provides a multi-perspective analysis and produces an exhaustive overview of the state-of-the-art approaches in this quickly developing filed. In reading the contributions to this volume, one is struck by the collection of contemporary studies in the domain of Translation Studies. Avoiding excessive complexity and technicality, this work of scholarship is highly accessible for researchers in related fields. In addition, the chapters of this volume are coordinated in an accessible way to sensitize the targeted reader as well as the researchers to have access to this must-have source. (...) The editor of this remarkable manuscript has succeeded in assembling an intriguing line-up of leading scholars in the domain of translation and discourse.”
−Review in Discourse Studies

Critical Applied Linguistics

The discursive construction of a new reality in Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende speech

Critical Discourse Studies
2023
10.1080/17405904.2023.2186450

Discourse and social cohesion in and after the Covid-19 pandemic

Media and Communication 10(2), 204−213
2022
10.17645/mac.v10i2.5150

Discursive structures and power relations in Covid-19 knowledge production

Humanities & Social Sciences Communications 8(248)
2021
10.1057/s41599-021-00935-2

Cross-linguistic studies of hashtags and metaphors in discourse

Investigating metaphor & representation with corpora

Analysing representation: A corpus and discourse textbook, ed. by C. Taylor & F. Heritage. pp. xx−xx. Routledge
submitted
no doi yet

Applying the Discourse Dynamics Approach to metaphors for women in the Spanish translation of the Chinese novel Wei Cheng

with Li Hongying and Xu Yingfeng
Perspectives
2023
10.1080/0907676X.2022.2164735

#MeToo in drei Sprachen: Qualitative Analyse von Konzepten und Diskursmustern im Englischen, Deutschen und Spanischen anhand von Twitter

with Oliver Czulo & Eleonore Schmitt
Deutsche Sprache 23(1), 51−77
2023
10.37307/j.1868-775X.2023.01.05

Is obesity just a health issue? Metaphorical framings of obesity in the People’s Daily

with Xiang Huang
CADAAD Journal 13(2), 18−40
2021
10.5281/zenodo.7352110

Movement or debate? How #MeToo is framed differently in English, Spanish and German Twitter discourse

Empirical studies in translation and discourse, ed. by M. Bisiada. pp. 113−140. Language Science Press.
2021
10.5281/zenodo.4450085

A cross-linguistic analysis of the “homework” metaphor in German and English political discourse

Discourse & Society 29(6), 609−628
2018
10.1177/0957926518802916

Editing in translation

Linguistic profiles of translation manuscripts and edited translations

with Tatiana Serbina & Stella Neumann
Proceedings for the First Workshop on Modelling Translation: Translatology in the Digital Age, 34−45. Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
2021
2021.motra-1.4

Translated language or edited language? A study of passive constructions in translation manuscripts and their published versions

Across Languages and Cultures 20(1), 35−56
2019
10.1556/084.2019.20.1.2

Translation and editing: A study of editorial treatment of nominalisations in draft translations

Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice 26(1), 24−38
2018
10.1080/0907676X.2017.1290121

The editor's invisibility: Analysing editorial intervention in translation

Target 30(2), 288−309
2018
10.1075/target.16116.bis

Editing nominalisations in English−German translation: When do editors intervene?

The Translator 24(1), 35−49
2018
10.1080/13556509.2017.1301847

Universals of editing and translation

Empirical modelling of translation and interpreting, ed. by S. Hansen-Schirra, O. Czulo & S. Hofmann. pp. 241−275. Language Science Press.
2017
10.5281/zenodo.1090972

Lösen Sie Schachtelsätze möglichst auf”: The impact of editorial guidelines on sentence splitting in German business article translations

Applied Linguistics 37(3), 354−376
2016
10.1093/applin/amu035

Language change through translation

Structural effects of English-German language contact in translation on concessive constructions in business articles

Text & Talk 36(2), 133−154
2016
10.1515/text-2016-0007

Changing conventions in German causal clause complexes: A diachronic corpus study of translated and non-translated business articles

Languages in Contrast 13(1), 1–27
2013
10.1075/lic.13.1.01bis

Thesis

From hypotaxis to parataxis: An investigation of English–German syntactic convergence in translation

University of Manchester PhD thesis
2013
EThOS: uk.bl.ethos.603111

Reviews & unindexed publications

Degrees of European belonging

Discourse Studies 23(6), 794−796
2021
10.1177/14614456211063006

Students

I'm interested in supervising research projects that fall within my research interests outlined above, or that pertain to the fields of cross-linguistic and/or corpus-assisted discourse or translation studies, or contrastive linguistics, especially involving German, English, Spanish and Catalan, or interdisciplinary projects that touch on any of those areas.

My approach to supervision is based on an open and friendly relationship on an equal footing. My philosophy is that my students work with me, not for me, and that it is my duty to help them establish themselves as independent researchers in the academic world. I don't impose topics on my students, but welcome and encourage self-determined exploration of their research interests. They are expected to send written work to me regularly during term time, to be discussed in personal meetings every two or three weeks. I don't generally do remote supervision or feedback by email. My students are encouraged to write and submit one or two articles during thesis writing. Potential applicants are invited to contact any of my students to get their opinion.

Here are some research projects I have supervised:

Completed PhD theses

2023
Metaphorical representations of obesity in Chinese media (2010-2022) (Xiang Huang)
Writer-reader relationship and technicality of vocabulary in multilingual health information websites in English, Spanish, and Catalan (Amy Dara Hochberg)

PhD theses in progress

Traducción de metáforas del chino al español en La fortaleza asediada − estudio basado en un corpus paralelo

Hongying Li, PhD in Translation and Language Sciences (since 2020)
Wei Cheng se cuenta entre las novelas chinas modernas más importantes, y contiene una gran cantidad de metáforas interesantes. De hecho, la metáfora puede servir como un portador cultural importante y una herramienta cognitiva en un idioma, y su presentación en otro idioma afectará la comprensión de los lectores del idioma de destino sobre la sociedad y la cultura china. Sin embargo, hasta la fecha, hay poco estudio sobre la traducción chino−español de las metáforas, por lo que un estudio sistemático de una novela rebosante de metáforas será muy significativo para esta cuestión. Este proyecto tiene el objetivo de analizar de manera descriptiva cómo se han traducido las metáforas de Wei Cheng en su versión española La fortaleza asediada. En primer lugar, identificaremos las metáforas de acuerdo con el criterio de MIPVU. En segundo lugar, en función de los fenómenos de la traducción, desenredaremos los métodos específicos de traducir las metáforas y observaremos si muestran una tendencia a la estrategia de “domesticación” o “extranjerización”. En tercer lugar, intentamos encontrar unas posibles correspondencias entre los diferentes tipos de metáforas chinas y sus traducciones. En cuarto lugar, determinaremos los cambios de los dominios de origen y destino de las metáforas en el texto original y el texto de destino desde una perspectiva cognitiva. Por último, analizaremos las razones detrás de estas decisiones de traducción desde el punto de vista del “cotext” y socio-cultural. La originalidad de este proyecto también se puede encontrar en el aspecto metodológico, puesto que demostrará que el MIPVU puede identificar no solo las metáforas chinas a nivel léxico, sino también a nivel sintagmático y textual, el cual será un avance para la aplicación del MIPVU a la lengua china.

Related publications

Li, Hongying. 2022. La traducción inglesa y española de la metáfora EL SER HUMANO ES UN ANIMAL en Weicheng: Un estudio contrastivo desde la perspectiva cognitiva. Estudios de Traducción 12, 163−171.

Linguistic representations of trans identities in the Turkish press: A corpus-based discourse analysis

Seda Karanfil, PhD in Translation and Language Sciences (since 2020)
The research focuses on one of the most vulnerable groups in Turkey, trans individuals, and how their identities are addressed by reiterative semantic patterns employed by a selection of mainstream and independent Turkish newspapers. The initial part will scrutinise the system of norms and values prevalent in the Turkish society with a cultural, religious, political and historical approach. Subsequently, the seminal features and functions of the Turkish newspapers, constituent components of the upcoming corpus, will be investigated. Particularly, the discrepancies between the mainstream and independent press will be focussed on, and it is expected that this descriptive analysis will facilitate the comprehension of the Turkish context, which is relatively disparate in comparison to the western one. This qualitative analysis will be followed by a quantitative one. In a narrower sense, a terminological analysis of trans words such as trans individual (which stands for transgender in Turkish), transsexual, trans and transvestite will be carried out by reference to frequency lists, concordances and collocations. The aim of this semantic prosody analysis is to spot the terminological choices frequently utilised by the Turkish press and to discern whether they are represented favourably or unfavourably while negotiating trans identities. In a broader sense, the news articles/reports comprising the future corpus will be analysed by using the social actors approach of Van Leeuwen. The timespan for the selection of news articles/reports is expected to be between 2016 and 2020 regarding the fact that the press and freedom of speech passed to a different phase with the 2016 military coup attempt in Turkey.

Exclusion from discourse and the construction of knowledge in an era of cancel culture: A critical analysis

Wade Raaflaub, PhD in Translation and Language Sciences (since 2021)
Cancel culture is the practice, particularly on social media, of criticising and withdrawing support for a public figure after they have said or done something perceived to be inappropriate or offensive, by attempting to reduce the power and efficacy of their fame, popularity or platform. The objective of this research is to study how the discourse surrounding cancel culture informs the underlying power struggles between privileged and marginalised segments of society, and the shaping of Western liberal and conservative ideologies as they relate to matters such as equality, diversity and free speech. In the context of three case studies involving English language media commentary about three public figures criticised for their views on sensitive and controversial topics, the overarching research questions aim to answer how cancel culture has excluded topics, and the expression of particular views and opinions about those topics, from discussion within public discourse, and how cancel culture has influenced the interpretation of what is true versus false, or right versus wrong, and therefore the construction of knowledge about particular topics. Within the framework of critical discourse studies, the methodologies of dispositive analysis and the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse, both in the tradition of Foucault, will be applied. Among the linguistic features to be examined within the discourse surrounding cancel culture are lexical choices, rhetorical devices, and argumentation strategies.

Measuring loss and gain in translation: Another look at translatability

Peter Till, PhD in Translation and Language Sciences (since 2022)
The need for translation quality assessment (TQA) has soared along with the need for translation. Teachers assess translation students’ work to determine mastery of the source language and target language. Clients want assurance of quality when they commission a translation to ensure that the translation is worth the cost. But how should translation quality be assessed? In order to avoid subjective opinions, objective evaluations should be used. However, currently there is no empirical method to measure the accuracy of a translation, or even an objective metric that can be used to provide insight into any specific accuracy issues. Consequently, the purpose of this thesis is to establish a method that can be used to empirically measure the accuracy of a translation based on the evaluation of any loss or (undue) addition of meaning features when an expression is translated. Through the use of an enhanced componential analysis, the proposed method provides a numerical value that greatly reduces the subjectivity of TQA. The proposed method will be itself evaluated through a comparison of the results of two groups of linguists that assess the accuracy of a series of translations where one group will be left to their own devices, and the other will be instructed to use the method proposed herein. The implications of the results of this research are far-reaching. Often translation quality assessment is highly subjective, even when based on a solid theoretical framework. Thus, a method that provides empirical results that remove a large portion of subjectivity from the assessment process would allow for more clarity and agreement on translation quality.

Tone tags: The linguistic method for conveying tones from written material on Twitter

Shahrad Alejandro Ghalili, PhD in Translation and Language Sciences (since 2022)
This thesis investigates the significant challenges and approaches in the process of message interpretation in text-based environments. Platforms such as Twitter enable paralinguistic tools available for people to reduce ambiguity in online text such as hashtags and emojis. Tone tags introduce a new paralinguistic cue in reducing digital miscommunication. Tone tags are symbols that are frequently attached to phrases found online to clarify the intent or intonation. What is not yet clear is the impact of tone tags on social media. To further investigate the efficacy of tone tags, this study aims to unravel some of the tool’s mysteries. Analysis will go in depth on how the online community, specifically in Canada and the U.S., responds to and uses tone tags through the lens of computer-mediated-communication theories. Surveys and qualitative methods are currently the most popular way of investigating tone tags. This study will adopt and enhance these approaches by incorporating corpus and thematic analysis to the data set. Data mining will be done through Tweepy over the span of 6 months to analyse the corpora of notable patterns and the rate of usage in tone tags. Thematic analysis will help the study identify the themes often associated with tweets incorporating tone tags. Comparing the data set results from variant analysis will help build in-depth conclusions on the rise of tone tags. Overall, this study strengthens the idea that miscommunication is an issue on social media. The investigation of tone tags will expand our understanding of methods increasing the processing fluency on social media.

Linguistic representations of presidential inaugural addresses in Taiwan: A corpus-based discourse analysis

Yu Shen Cheng, PhD in Translation and Language Sciences (since 2022)
This research project aims at discovering how linguistic representations are constructed in the inaugural addresses by the sixth to fifteenth presidents of Taiwan, Chiang Ching-kuo, Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian, Ma Ying-jeou and Tsai Ing-wen, according to their executive orders, based on Systemic Functional Linguistics. The inaugurations of the presidents listed above individually present different modern political historical periods, as well as marking milestones in the Taiwanese democratisation process, from dictatorship to democracy. In order to compare linguistic representations according to the democratic timeline, the research project will utilise a diachronic approach to analyse how linguistic representations are constructed differently across time with the intention to understand how linguistic mechanisms such as transitivity and social actor analysis influence the citizens' interpretation of the notion of sovereignty and regime governing the island, as well as the relation between the State and citizenship.

Female identity and news values: A discourse analysis of reports on Chinese Sina Weibo

Qianqian Wu, PhD in Translation and Language Sciences (since 2022)
Gender equality is a critical issue in contemporary society, and language plays a crucial role in reflecting and constructing reality. Therefore, critical discourse studies from a gender perspective are crucial to understanding how discourse constructs the female identity and how language can either contribute to or hinder progress toward gender equality. This study aims to contribute to the existing literature by integrating the Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) framework and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approaches and conducting a comparative analysis of the representation of Chinese females in the Chinese official and commercial media discourse dataset. Specifically, the study utilizes computer-assisted techniques and discourse analysis approaches to explore the linguistic resources from a dataset of news blogs on the topic of professional and domestic women. It aims to conduct statistical analyses to explore the dominant news values and ideological implications, and offer insights into the social context and media system in China.

Recent MA dissertations

2023 − MA in Discourse Studies
Análisis críticas sobre las metáforas en los comentarios de un vídeo en Bilibili sobre la difícil situación de los jóvenes (Yao Meng)
2022 − MA in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
Influencia de las lenguas extranjeras en el léxico eslovaco (Adela Hornanská)
2020 − MA in Translation Studies
How do you meme? La transcreación y la adaptación cultural en memes de internet (Mar Floristán)
Discurso y biopoder en la (re)presentación de las migraciones en prensa (Javier Rodríguez)
2019 − MA in Translation Studies
Tendencias en la traducción literal de memes del inglés al español (Amalia del Río)
2018 − MA in Translation Studies
Language and style in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's − the German translations from 1959 and 2006 (Rebecca Knoll)
2017 − MA in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
From migrant to migrante: A corpus-based analysis (Gang Yao)

Recent BA dissertations

2022 − BA in Applied Languages
La relació de les dones no heterosexuals amb la paraula lesbiana (Marta Ruiz Llamas)
2021 − BA in Translation & Interpreting
L'alemany i la interpretació a la història (Víctor Bosque)
2020 − BA in Applied Languages
Análisis pragmático-discursivo del humor desde una perspectiva feminista (Georgina Garcia)
Categorical speech perception in bilinguals: A review on previous research and an experimental proposal (Michelle Throssell)
2019 − BA in Applied Languages 2019
Comparative analysis of stress-shifting pronominal encliticisation in two Menorcan towns (Júlia Florit)
Una anàlisi prosòdica del dialecte tortosí i lleidatà (Mariona Reverté)
¡Que caes el puchero! Verbos inacusativos y su transividad en Castilla y León (Clàudia Martínez)

Talks

Invited talks

Here is a list of events where I've given talks as invited speaker.

IATIS logo

4th IATIS International Translator Training Workshop

Cross-linguistic and corpus-based translation studies − Challenges and implications
Uzbek State World Languages University, Uzbekistan (3 April 2019)

Features of mediated discourse: A corpus investigation of translated and edited language

Discourse Studies Research Group Seminar
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
11 December 2015

Syntactic change through translation: A corpus-based approach to language change

UCREL Seminar
University of Lancaster, GB
10 November 2011

Conference talks

Click on the icon to download the slides.

Linguistic variation across different groups of translated and non-translated texts: Combined effect and individual contributions of lexico-grammatical features

with Tatiana Serbina & Stella Neumann
Translation in Transition 6 − Charles University, Czech Republic, 2022

#MeToo discourses as communities of practice in English, German and Spanish

XIII International Corpus Linguistics Conference (CILC 2022) − Università degli studi di Bergamo, Italy, 2022

Four explanatory variables in an empirical model of translation

with Tatiana Serbina & Stella Neumann
TRICKLET conference − RWTH Aachen, Germany, 2022

Reflections on a post-positivist study of migration and language

Approaches to Language, Migration and Identity 2021 − University of Sussex, UK, 2021

Linguistic profiles of translation manuscripts and edited translations

Workshop on Modelling Translation: Translatology in the Digital Age − University of Reykjavik, Iceland, 2021

Movement or debate? How #MeToo is framed differently across languages

Discourse and Politics Seminar Series 2021 − University of Nottingham, UK, 2021

Movement or debate? Differing discourses on the #MeToo hashtag in English, German and Spanish

Genealogies of Knowledge II: Evolving transnational, transdisciplinary and translational epistemologies − Hong Kong Baptist University, China, 2020

Already a movement or still a debate? Framings of the #MeToo hashtag in German, English and Spanish

Translation in Transition 4 − Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain, 2019

The “education” frame as a means to establish unequal power relations and manipulate debates

23rd DiscourseNet Conference (DN23) − Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Italy, 2019

The editor’s invisibility: Changes to nominalisation in the translation workflow

Translation in Transition 3 − Universiteit Gent, Belgium, 2017

“Tsipras’s homework has been thrown back in his face”: A cross-linguistic study of the “homework” metaphor as positive self- and negative other presentation

International Contrastive Linguistics Conference 8 (ICLC8) − National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, 2017

Precision or readability? On the influence of editors in English-German business translation

Meaning in Translation: Illusion of Precision − Riga Technical University, Latvia, 2016

Editors' influence on passive use in English-German business translation

Congreso Internacional de Traducción: EnTRetextos − Universitat de Valencia, Spain, 2016

An investigation of diachronic change in hypotaxis and parataxis in German through language contact with English in translation

Diachronic Corpora, Genre and Language Change − University of Nottingham, UK, 2016

Tracing nominalisation through the phases of English-German translation: A case study of grammatical metaphor

The 42nd International Systemic Functional Congress (ISFC42) − RWTH Aachen, Germany, 2015

Investigating English-German translation of ideational grammatical metaphor in business articles

Metaphors in/and/of Translation: Specialised RaAM seminar − Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands, 2015

Estudio de caso de la metáfora gramatical a través de un análisis corpus de la traducción del inglés al alemán

VII International Corpus Linguistics Conference (CILC 2015) − Universidad de Valladolid, Spain, 2015

Differentiating the translation process: A corpus analysis of editorial influence on translated business articles

Translation in Transition 2 − Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany, 2015

The effect of sentence splitting on cohesion in German business translations

4th Using Corpora in Contrastive and Translation Studies Conference (UCCTS4) − University of Lancaster, UK, 2014

Diachronic change in causal cohesive devices in translated and non-translated German business articles

7th International Contrastive Linguistics (ICLC7) & 3rd Using Corpora in Contrastive and Translation Studies Conference (UCCTS3) − Universiteit Gent, Belgium, 2013

Language change through translation? Investigating diachronic syntactic change in English–German business article translations

8th International Postgraduate Conference in Translation & Interpreting (IPCITI8) − Dublin City University, Ireland, 2012

Syntactic change through translation: A corpus-based approach to language change

20th International Postgraduate Linguistics Conference (PLC20) − University of Manchester, UK, 2011

The effect of translation on language change: How corpora can advance the debate

7th International Postgraduate Conference in Translation & Interpreting (IPCITI7) − University of Edinburgh, UK, 2011

Teaching

Current teaching

Past teaching

At the University of Kent (January 2012 − April 2014), I taught German linguistics, German phonetics & phonology, German as a second language and Translation between English and German. I also supervised extended year abroad essays on linguistic issues of present-day German.

Teaching qualifications

  • Formació Inicial en Docència Universitària
    Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2016
  • Associate Teacher Accreditation Programme
    University of Kent, 2014