Events
Reminder: 5th International Language in the Media Conference (28‐30 September 2013 - Queen Mary, University of London)
On September 28, 29 and 30 the International Language in the Media Conference will be taking place. This is the fifth in a biennial series of international conferences organized around the role of the media in relation to the representation, construction and production of language.
The primary theme of the 2013 conference will be journalism – in its many historical and contemporary manifestations – and its redefinition in the face of social media and established practice, taking its cue from the confluence of historic Fleet Street and new media and digital innovation in London. Topics pertaining to participation, authorship, history, editorial selection, social memory, community engagement, place, and technology as it informs practice and change will underscore the theme, alongside new and traditional work on media representation, social meaning, multimodality, visual communication, genres of text and talk, and mobilities.
Alongside this focus, the 2013 conference, as it has done from its inception in 2005, will continue to prioritize papers which address the range of sociolinguistic topics in relation to the media broadly defined: language standardization and style; literacy policy and practice; language acquisition; multilingualism and cross-/inter-cultural communication; communication in professional contexts; representations of speech, thought, and writing; language and class, dis/ability, race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality and age; political discourse, commerce and global capitalism; language and education.
Also on the agenda: A plenary panel of active journalists and linguists talking about what has changed in journalism and what remains the same, with an eye to inspiring future research/ers and providing new directions for investigation of language in the media.
Plenary speakers are:
- Allan Bell (Auckland University of Technology, NZ)
- Martin Conboy (University of Sheffield, UK)
- Helen Kelly‐Holmes (University of Limerick, Ireland)
- Daniel Perrin (Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland)
On Friday September 27 there are three pre-conference workshops:
• 10am-3.30pm – WORKSHOP 1: Making Media in Your Language
• 3.30-5pm – WORKSHOP 2: News Values and News Discourse
• 5-6pm – WORKSHOP 3: Understanding Specialty Journalism/Social Media
Please direct any queries to Colleen Cotter at or .
Further information can be found at http://linguistics.sllf.qmul.ac.uk/LangMedia2013 .
A link to registration is on the conference website: http://linguistics.sllf.qmul.ac.uk/langmedia2013 .
NT&T Talk: Maarten Franck (University of Antwerp (UA) / Artesis University College Antwerp) on Friday March 15, 2013 - Ghent University
"From agency coverage to online news: what does (not) change?"
We kindly invite you to attend the NT&T talk by Maarten Franck on Friday, March 15, 2013 at Ghent University, entitled "From agency coverage to online news: what does (not) change?".You can read the abstract below.
Belga is Belgium’s main press agency. But which role does it play in Belgium’s current media landscape? ‘Its role is becoming more and more important,’ one correspondent told me in an interview, adding that a lot of his coverage is taken over almost word for word, by print and online media in particular.
I will not be discussing whether Belga is indeed becoming more and more important, as a brief talk will not be sufficient for a historic. What I will discuss are (1) some practices at the news agency, focusing on one specific case in which a corporate press release was turned into agency feed, and in turn was taken over by different print and online media, and (2) how much of online coverage refers to Belga (and other agencies) as its main source, and what does (not) change when agency copy is taken over by these online news desks.
While the first part of my talk is centered on one specific example and interview data, the second part is based on the analysis of a corpus spanning seven days from October 14th 2011 to December 11th 2011 for the following online news sites: www.demorgen.be, www.hln.be, www.nieuwsblad.be and www.standaard.be.
The talk will start at 2 PM, March 15, 2013. The venue: Meeting room at Dean's office (ground floor), Faculty of Economics, Ghent University. (Tweekerkenstraat 2, Building Hoveniersberg - 9000 Ghent)
Please send an e-mail to should you wish to attend.
NT&T talk: Colleen Cotter (University of London, Queen Mary) on Monday January 14, 2013 - Ghent University
"When change happens: How journalists protect and promote language use and variation"
We kindly invite you to attend the NT&T talk by Colleen Cotter on Monday, January 14, 2013 at Ghent University, entitled "When change happens: How journalists protect and promote language use and variation".
Journalists self-identify as “protectors” of the language (Cotter 2010), engaging in prescriptive behaviors at every level of practice, and at the same time they respond to the cultural zeitgeist, promoting linguistic innovation or reacting to it (cf. Milroy and Milroy 1999). I argue that both protection and promotion responses are cut from the same sociocultural cloth. Journalists within their profession very actively manifest both conservative and innovative language use, the worry or contestation about language change that follows or the social motivations behind it also part of their professional discourse or metatalk. Thus an exploration of the ways journalists talk about language use, in particular through a primary professional outlet, The Associated Press Stylebook – the “journalist’s bible” – can provide insight into the news community’s attitudes toward language use, the moral judgments that attend them, and the broader dimension of society’s attitudes toward its members. As one journalist asking peers to be mindful of their language noted: “The words a journalist uses can either reinforce stereotypes or help to correct them” (LoTempio 2006).
The case examples and analyses are ethnographically situated, drawn from AP stylebooks and discourse from journalists, and address both prescriptive usage and language changes, and the ways in which journalists consciously alter their usage patterns to reflect social change in progress (a case in point being Fasold et al.’s 1990 study of gender reference). The data show the degree to which there is an ongoing conversation or metatalk about language within the news profession and the active role the news media expect themselves to play in its linguistic and social support. Thus the news media capture sociolinguistic points in time showing what is culturally salient and what is not. One conclusion is that journalists are more attuned to social variation than has been posited and thus it makes in-group study worthy of further exploration.
The talk will start at 2 PM, January 14, 2013. The venue: Meeting room at Dean's office (ground floor), Faculty of Economics, Ghent University. (Tweekerkenstraat 2, Building Hoveniersberg - 9000 Ghent)
Panel Introduction:
“Leadership and Discourse: Exploring leadership practices, image construction and power management” - IPrA conference New Delhi, September 2013
During the upcoming IPrA Conference in New Delhi (September 2013), Cornelia Ilie (Malmö, Sweden), Geert Jacobs (Ghent, Belgium) and Daniel Perrin (Zürich, Switzerland) will be organizing a panel entitled “Leadership and Discourse: Exploring leadership practices, image construction and power management”.
A general call for presentations will be posted. The Panel currently comprises 13 committed participants.
A full abstract for the panel can be found below.
It’s been argued that managers “win the game” by understanding the rules, applying them, and purposely breaking them at times (Nielsen 2009) while leaders win by understanding that rules change, by anticipating that things move in different directions, and by inspiring their teams to follow – even without evidence (Bolden & Gosling 2006). Recent work in this area has given evidence of the crucial role of language in this game (Clifton, 2012). Such insights call for a new strand of research that is no longer quantitative, rooted in social psychology and focused on what leaders are, but qualitative, oriented towards discourse and interested in what leaders do. Our interdisciplinary panel brings together wide-ranging empirical research that goes behind the scenes of organizations (business, politics, media, health and others) to unravel discursive leadership practices as they unfold in situ. In particular, we invite contributions that explore how leadership discourse is impacted by increasing pressures of glocalization (the need to communicate across cultures and languages), mediatization (leaving ubiquitous, durable digital traces), standardization (with quality management programmes negotiating organizational procedures), mobility (endless fast-paced longdistance synchronization) and acceleration (permanent co-adaption and change). In order to get deeper insights into the competing, multi-voiced, controversial and complex identities and relationships enacted in leadership discourse practices, we welcome cross-cultural and gender-related approaches. The workshop discussion moves beyond questions of who is a leader and what leaders do, to how leadership is practiced in various communities of practice and how leadership makes change possible. We are interested in contributing to an enhanced understanding of how leadership is discursively constructed, de-constructed and re-constructed in a variety of formal and informal organizational activities from mentoring and motivating to gatekeeping and decision-making. Data can be drawn from oral, written and digital interaction, including meetings, interview, written policy documents, writing processes, all kinds of reports, websites, e-mails and social network sites.
References
Bolden, Richard, & Gosling, Jonathan (2006). Leadership competencies: Time to change the tune? Leadership, 2(2), 147–163.Clifton, Jonathan (2012). A discursive approach to leadership. Journal of Business Communication, 49(2), 148-168.
Nielsen, Mie Femo (2009). Interpretative management in business meetings. Understanding managers' interactional strategies through conversation analysis. Journal of Business Communication, 46(1), 23–56.
Screening Documentary "Has Belgium got news for You?", November 29, 2012
Ghent College (Departement Toegepaste Taalkunde) kindly invites you to the closing event of the project "Flanders in the Foreign Press on November 29, 2012.
The evening's main event will be the screening of the short documentary entitled "Has Belgium got News for You?", at 7.30 PM at Zaal Miry (Ghent Conservatorium, Hoogpoort 64, Ghent).
Afterwards, there will be a reception at Ghent City Hall. (Botermarkt 1, 9000 Gent)
Please let us know whether you will be attending by sending an email to Ellen.VanPraet@UGent.be.
Discourses of Expertise workshop
Discourse in Organizations (DiO) is offering a ‘methods school’ on Discourses of Expertise later this summer. The Venue is the University of Antwerp, and the dates are Monday 27 August – Thursday 30 August 2012. More information on program and speakers can be found on www.ua.ac.be/DiO .
Mark Deuze lecture
The Faculty of Policitical and Social Sciences at Antwerp University kindly invites you to attend a lecture held by Mark Deuze on September 20, 2012 (from 6 PM - 7.30 PM) entitled 'Media Life'.
Mark Deuze is Associate Professor at Indiana University, with a PhD from the University of Amsterdam in his home country The Netherlands. Publications of his work include over fifty articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and seven books – including Media Work (2007) and Media Life (2012). Beyond researching people and their media, Mark listens to and studies extreme metal (deuze.blogspot.com).
Mark Deuze reflects on how we may think of our lives as lived in rather than with media. Research consistently shows how, through the years, more of our time is spent using media, how media multiply in everyday life, and that consuming media for most people takes place alongside producing media. His new book Media Life uses the way people experience media as a prism to understand key issues in contemporary society, in which reality is open source, identities are – like websites – always under construction, and private life is lived in public forever more.
The lecture by Mark Deuze will be preceded by a closed seminar on ‘new methods for media research’, that is aimed at PhD and postdoctoral researchers from social sciences and humanities with an interest in media studies.
The venue: Stadscampus – Gebouw C, aula C.002 (hoek Grote Kauwenberg / Vekestraat).
Participation is free of charge, but we would urge you to register online before September 14, 2012 at http://www.ua.ac.be/main.aspx?c=*PSW&n=108881.
Presentation Doctoral Dissertation Roel Coesemans
On Wednesday, May 16, Roel Coesemans will be presenting his doctoral dissertation entitled "Interpreting News Discourse on Kenya’s Post-election Crisis -Context, Ideology, and the Pragmatics of National and International Press Coverage" at 3 PM, at Stadscampus - Hof Van Liere (F. De Tassiszaal), Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp.
His thesis presents an ethnographically-supported linguistic pragmatic analysis of news discourse on Kenya’s post-election crisis (December 2007 – April 2008). In search for intertextual links and ideological meanings in national and international press coverage thematically-related newspaper reports from the US (New York Times, Washington Post), the UK (The Independent, The Times) and Belgium (De Morgen, De Standaard) were contrasted to local newspaper articles (from Daily Nation, The Standard). This critical discourse analysis focused on patterns of word choice and keywords at the lexical level, the representation of social actors at the discursive level, and presupposition at the pragmatic level of the journalistic language use. An ethnic frame of interpretation was dominant in the foreign press, while the Kenyan press tended to report on the events from a politico-criminal perspective. Several journalistic and discursive choices with ideological potential, mainly concerning the tribal language use in the international press and the suppression of ethnicity in the local press, could be further explained by contextual factors from the news production process. For foreign correspondents tribe names and expressions such as tribal war or ethnic clashes were useful as they provided a means to narrate the news stories in a simple and comprehensible way and appealed to the audiences in the US, the UK and Belgium. The downside is that other factors of the violent crisis, such as land issues, historic injustices, political patronage, poverty, migration and recent socio-economic trends, were underexplored. The Kenyan journalists avoided explicit references to ethnicity, even when ethnic factors were involved in some of the conflicts, because it was editorial policy or they believed it would inflame passions and aggravate the situation. This kind of self-censorship can also be criticized, because it can be questioned whether the Kenyan press succeeded in soothing the anxiety by withholding information. Instead of sweeping them under the carpet, social issues, such as ethnic tensions, should be debatable so that long-term solutions can be found. It is argued that both the foreign and the local press can improve the accuracy of their reporting by being more transparent, providing more context and offering different perspectives.
Presentation Doctoral Dissertation Reza Kherabadi
In March, Reza Kherabadi publically presented his doctoral dissertation in his native Iran. We are pleased to announce he was awarded the maximum amount of points by the jury.
ESP Exploratory Workshop on 'Mediating the Past: Memory practices between social cohesion and fragmentation'
14-16 March 2012, Braunschweig, Germany - The main objective of this three-day workshop is thus to bring together for the first time experts from memory studies and linguistic ethnography to explore how to open up ‘memorypractices’ as a substantive field of enquiry. The former have expertise in the dynamics and mediation of memory; the latter in how language and interaction figure in struggles over meaning, processes of inclusion and exclusion and the mediation of social cohesion and fragmentation.
For more information on the workshop, take a look at the programme or check out the website.
Doctoral School Seminar
10 September 2010 - NT&T is organizing a Doctoral School seminar entitled "News ethnography in practice: fieldwork and analysis" on Dec. 16, 2010. This one-day workshop is aimed at doctoral students integrating an ethnographic perspective in their research and looking for advice about the practice of fieldwork, including access to the field, data collection and data analysis. The workshop accommodates 5 to 8 students and is aimed at familiarizing participants with
- ethical, observational and practical aspects of participant observation;
- the analytical affordances and limitations of a linguistic ethnographic approach to institutional communication (i.c. news production processes).
Assessment is in the form of in-class assignments and a 2,000-word discussion paper to be handed in by 1 February 2010. More information and registration: click here.
NT&T at ESSE 10, Turin.
26 August 2010 - Geert was nominated by the BAAHE (the Belgian Association of Anglicists in Higher Education) to give a sub-plenary lecture on 'Beyond news text and talk' at the 10th Conference of the European Society for the Study of English in Turin, Italy.
Association for Business Communication European Convention
25 May 2010 - Ellen, Geert, Henk and Tom will be attending and presenting at ABC's European Convention at Lessius University College in Antwerp, Belgium (May 27-29, 2010). The book of abstracts and the conference program are available here and here.
Text & Talk special issue on linguistic ethnography and institutions
3 April 2010 - Ellen and Geert (together with Peter Flynn) have co-edited a special issue of Text & Talk on linguistic ethnography and institutions. This special issue attempts to show the added value of combining various approaches to linguistics with ethnographic studies of institutional discursive practices and their socially constructed sets of conventions. The special issue is available online at this link.
Bart Sturtewagen interview
25 March 2010 - Ellen & Tom interviewed De Standaard editor-in-chief Bart Sturtewagen during Ghent University College's Multitalendag. The interview was filmed and a summary will be broadcast in April during the 'Hogent journaal' on local television station AVS.
Guest lecture @ QMUL
18 March 2010 - Tom will give a guest lecture at Queen Mary, University of London today.
Writing from sources: ethnographic insights into business news production
Dr Tom Van Hout
Ghent University College, Belgium
4.10-5pm*
Thursday, March 18
Laws G.04, QMUL, Mile End Road
ABSTRACT
How do reporters make sense of the various sources, narratives and frames around them and channel these into one final news story? What is the journalist's role in the representation of events? How are news articles negotiated between reporters, editors and sources? How do technologies of production mediate the news process? Crucially, what does the journalist actually do while writing? This talk explores these questions and presents:
(a) a linguistic ethnographic approach to news production;
(b) fieldwork procedures for collecting data;
(c) empirical analyses of print journalists at work; and
(d) a theoretical account of the situated practices of print journalists.
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese
11 March 2010 - NT&T was in full effect - and good company - at Colleen Cotter's book launch at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese Pub in the heart of London - Fleet Street. From left to right: Daniel, Tom, Ellen and Colleen. Mysteriously missing in this picture is NT&T capo Geert.
ITMF ready for launch
2 March 2010 - In order to further promote linguistic research into news production, NT&T is teaming up with Ghent University College. An interinstitutional research group - ITMF (website to follow shortly) - has been formally approved and will be officially launched on March 11 (10:30 am) in Ghent. Daniel Perrin (Zürich University of Applied Sciences) will give a keynote lecture during the launch.
“There are two different stories to tell here”: TV journalists’ collaborative text-picture production strategies
Daniel Perrin - Institute of Applied Media Studies, Zürich University of Applied Sciences
What do journalists do when they negotiate their work, solve their problems, and produce their multimodal news items? - In this lecture, a theoretical framework for analyzing newswriting processes as societal, organizational and individual activity is outlined and applied to case studies of a large ethnographic research project. In the project, we investigate how the Swiss public broadcasting company SRG should, wants to, and can contribute to mutual understanding and identity formation in
If you would like to attend this event, please notify Bram Vertommen (Bram.Vertommen AT hogent.be).
Book launch Colleen Cotter
2 March 2010 - On March 11, NT&T member Colleen Cotter will launch her highly anticipated book - News Talk: Investigating the language of journalism (Cambridge University Press). NT&T will attend the book launch. Congratulations, Colleen!
Viva Tom
27 February 2010 - Tom's viva is set for March 10, 2010 at the Zebrastraat convention center and will start at 4pm. You are kindly invited to attend. R.S.V.P. (tom.vanhout AT ugent.be).
Roel Coesemans seminar
22 January 2010 - Roel Coesemans (Antwerp Center for Pragmatics, University of Antwerp) gave a seminar on meaning transformation in news discourse. Here is his presentation. Thanks, Roel.
UK Linguistic Ethnography Forum
24 September 2009 - Tom has been elected to the Coordinating Committee of the UK Linguistic Ethnography Forum (UKLEF), a BAAL Special Interest Group.
DICOEN keynote
24 September 2009 - Geert will give a keynote lecture entitled 'Before the news: discursive perspectives on news management and corporate communication' at the Fifth International Conference on Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise (Milan, 24-26 September 2009).
DiO Workshop paper
18 September 2009 - Ellen and Tom gave a talk entitled 'Competence on Display: Intertextuality at work during editorial meetings' at the Second International Discourse in Organizations Workshop in Ghent.
NT&T conquers Melbourne
21 July 2009 - NT&T, in collaboration with Daniel Perrin, organized a panel on Collaborative news writing: A discursive perspective on news production at the 11th International Pragmatics Conference. David Yoong, linguist and photographer, was kind enough to make a number of pictures of the panel available. Thank you, David.
Panel line-up
- Daniel Perrin - “Let the pictures do the talking” – Investigating TV journalists’ collaborative text production strategies
- Tom Van Hout & Ellen Van Praet Buy or sell? The role of consumption and authorship in financial news writing
- Ellen Van Praet & Tom Van Hout - Competence on display: negotiating status during editorial meetings
- Marcel Burger - Dealing with conflicting journalistic styles to achieve texts: oral negotiation of written media discourse
- Inés Olza - The role of metaphor in news production: Political metaphors in "preformulated" media texts
- Jasper Vandenberghe - New Spanish conquistadores? Newspaper articles and press releases on Spanish foreign investments in Argentina.
Tom, Daniel and Marcel also participated in a session on language and media at the Journalism in the 21st Century conference.
Session overview:
- Van Hout, Tom, Ghent University, Belgium
Quality Churnalism: Ethnographic Insights into Business News Production
Here is my presentation - adapted slightly at the last minute to fit the 15 minute presentation time slot.
- Burger, Marcel, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Conflicting Journalistic Styles and Textual Production: The Oral Negotiations Preceding the Inscription of Media Discourse
Marcel really impressed the audience with his data. Recurring question during the discussion afterwards: how in the world did you get this sort of access?
- McKay, Susan & Fitzgerald, Richard, The University of Queensland, Australia
News Language in Contemporary Media Environments
How do broadcast news media target niche audiences? Answer: by converging production formats with consumption formats. The news studio has become a domestic space of consumption, complete with arm chairs, dinner tables and sofas - and the conversationalized register that these settings elicit.
- Owen, Thomas, Massey University, New Zealand Representations of Global Governance in Press Coverage of the Access to Medicines Debate
A corpus analytical study of a (quintessentially) globalized public discourse: access to medicines. Thomas is a very talented speaker and his data speak to issues of governance, agency, equality and nation-states.
NewsTalk&Triathlon
18 May 2009 - NT&T competed in a recreational sprint triathlon (500m swim, 22k bike, 5k run) and showed its mettle. Geert, Ellen and Thomas (Geert's oldest son) placed first in the mixed U40 age group relay race and Tom won third place in the individual race.
NT&T Working Paper Series
NT&T is pleased to announce its Working Paper Series, the purpose of which is to:
- Provide an electronic forum for the dissemination of work in press or in progress;
- Inclusion in this series does not imply that the paper cannot be submitted for publication elsewhere;
- If published elsewhere, the paper in question will be withdrawn from the Working Paper Series and replaced by a DOI reference;
- Unless explicitly stated, work published in this series may be quoted when attributed in the usual way.
All papers in the Series will be made available on [this website] as freely downloadable PDF documents. Six installments are now live.
Stijn Joye Seminar
8 March 2009 - As part of the NT&T research seminar series, Stijn Joye, a research assistant at the Department of Communication Studies (Ghent University), presented a research paper entitled Breaking news or forgotten emergency? Unravelling imbalances in news coverage of humanitarian crises through Critical Discourse Analysis. Here are his presentation slides. Cheers, Stijn.
Future of Journalism Conference
20 February 2009 - Tom has learned that his paper proposal has been accepted for presentation at the Future of Journalism conference to be held in Cardiff (8-9 September 2009). The call for papers drew more than 300 submissions from 47 countries.
Journalism in the 21st Century Conference
18 January 2009 - Tom will present a paper at Journalism in the 21st Century: Between Globalization and National Identity in Melbourne, Australia (16-17 July 2009). The conference is organized by the Media and Communications Program at the University of Melbourne in cooperation with the International Communication Association (ICA).
NT&T pictures added
10 November 2008 - Following a productive online brainstorm and heated forum discussions, the NT&T crew descended upon London for an editorial meeting at Queen Mary University. Hosted by Colleen Cotter, the event was a professional and social success. Thanks, Colleen.
Clockwise from L to R: Guiliana Garzone, Daniel Perrin, (John Richardson), Tom Van Hout, Colleen Cotter, Ellen Van Praet, Felicitas Macgilchrist, Geert Jacobs, Lut Lams, Paola Catenaccio, Mark De Smedt. Photo credit: Colleen Cotter.
Talking News Production
Together with a number of colleagues, Ellen, Geert and Tom are working on a collaborative position paper on the linguistics of news production. Come join us at talkingnewsproduction.ning.com if you would like to contribute.
IPrA panel - call for papers
In colloboration with Daniel Perrin (Zürich University), Ellen and Tom are convening a panel on collaborative news writing at the 11th International Pragmatics Conference in Melbourne, Australia (July 12-17, 2009). The call for papers can be found here (.doc). Please contact us if you would like to contribute to the panel.
Andrea Rocci research seminar
Andrea Rocci (University of Lugano) gave a compelling talk on predictions in financial news. Andrea's muscular theoretical framework did what these seminars are supposed to do: generate discussion about news production at the intersection of research traditions, theoretical models and analytical perspectives. Andrea's presentation slides are now available for download (.pdf).
Geert wins ABC elections
6 May 2008 - Breaking news: Geert has just been elected as European Vice-President of the Association for Business Communication. Congratulations Geert!
NT&T launch pictures
A selection of pictures from the launch can be viewed on NT&T's Flickr site.
Pragmatics Special Issue
17 March 2008 - A special issue of Pragmatics on the discourse of news management has just been published. This issue was guest-edited by Geert and Henk.
News management @ University of Milan
17 March 2008 - Geert and Tom will teach a two-day seminar on writing press releases at the University of Milan (22-24 April 2008).
NT&T research seminar
12 March 2008 - NT&T is starting up a research seminar series during which selected scholars present their views on one of our discussion topics. The first speaker to kick off this new initiative is Andrea Rocci from the University of Lugano. Andrea will give a talk on 13 June 2008. Details to follow.
Lessius guest lecture
4 March 2008 - Tom gave a guest lecture about newswriting at Lessius University College. His presentation (in Dutch) can be downloaded [here].
NT&T formally approved
14 December 2007 - NT&T is happy to announce that our research group has been formally approved by Ghent University. This means that NT&T is now an official research group of the Faculty of Arts. Yay!
NT&T working paper
November 2007 - A working paper by Tom Van Hout and Felicitas Macgilchrist on newswriting can now be downloaded.
NT&T launch
The NewsTalk&Text research group will be officially launched on March 14, 2008 in Ghent. During this event, Daniel Perrin (Zürich) will give a keynote lecture. Program details are now live.
PhD on press releases in Sweden
On 12 October 2007 Geert was Maria Lindholm's opponent for her viva at the University of Linköping (Sweden). In her PhD Maria presents a mix of ethnographic and text-based research on how Swedish and French press releases are written at the EU's European Commission in Brussels.
IPrA Panel
July 2007 - In collaboration with Lut Lams (Brussels), Tom and Geert convened a panel at the 10th International Pragmatics Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, entitled: The Pragmatics of News Production Processes. The line-up included Charles Briggs (Berkeley), Colleen Cotter (London), Daniel Perrin (Zürich), Henk Pander Maat (Utrecht), Lut Lams (Brussels) and Geert & Tom (Ghent). Abstract can be downloaded here.
ABC Panel
May 2007 - At the ABC Convention in Istanbul (Turkey), Geert and Tom convened a panel on the discourse of PR and popularization. Details and abstracts can be found here.
Geert wins ABC award
March 2007 - Together with co-authors Liesbeth Opdenacker and Luuk Van Waes, Geert has won ABC's 2006 award for Outstanding Business Communication Quarterly article. The Publications Board was intrigued with the Calliope online writing center which the authors developed at the University of Antwerp and describe in "A Multilanguage Online Writing Center for Professional Communication: Development and Testing." The Board was impressed with Calliope because it was both genre and context specific, used a process approach to accommodate different learning styles, and was highly interactive. A copy of the award-winning article can be found here (pdf).
DiO Workshop
December 2006 - Together with Chris Braecke and Katja Pelsmaekers from the University of Antwerp, Geert and Tom have organized a series of interactive workshops on Discourse in Organizations (DiO). The first speaker was Simon Cottle (Cardiff University), who gave a talk on Ethnography and Journalism. The working paper can be downloaded here.
As of 2007-2008, Sylvain Dieltjens and Priscilla Heynderickx (Lessius University College, Antwerp) and Craig Rollo (University of Antwerp) have joined the DiO crew.