Project Members
Christoph Neuenschwander graduated from the University of Bern in 2010, acquiring a lic. phil. hist. in English Linguistics with a focus on intercultural communication, ideology of standardisation, and pidgin and creole languages. This linguistic research interest was complemented by Media Studies and English Literature (focus on postcolonial literature) as minor subjects. He has worked as a journalist, English teacher and “Fachperson Begabungsförderung”, teaching journalism at primary school. In 2013, Christoph Neuenschwander started his PhD project at the University of Bern, examining language ideological debates about pidgins and creoles. The project concentrates on two Pacific creoles, which have a history as plantation lingua francas, but – supposedly – have developed very differently in terms of their status and function within their communities: Hawai’i Creole and Tok Pisin. The aim of the project is to look at the meta-linguistic discourses that have facilitated (or slowed down) the legitimisation and standardisation processes of these two languages. Other research interests include prescriptivism and purism in the history of English, cultural linguistics, ideological debates in creole studies, and the different conceptualisations of culture in the field of linguistics.
You can contact Christoph at: [email protected]
Laura Tresch graduated from the University of Oxford in 2013, acquiring an MA in English Linguistics with a focus on sociolinguistics, language attitudes and dialectology. Prior to this, she obtained a BA in English languages and literatures, and Russian languages and literatures from the University of Lausanne. Laura is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Bern as part of the SNSF funded project Contact, Mobility and Authenticity: Language Ideologies in Creolisation and Koinéisation, under the supervision of Professor David Britain. Her PhD project focuses on examining the changing language ideologies that lead to the authentication and legitimisation of new dialects, by analysing the public metalinguistic discourses that revolve around two such dialects: New Zealand English, and the Englishes of South-East England.
Laura has experience as a teaching assistant in Modern English Linguistics at the University of Bern, as an English teacher for a programme supported by the Department of Education, Culture and Sport, as a Matura expert for English exams in the Canton of Bern, and as a translator. Her main other research interests are language attitudes, language and the media, the interface between linguistic and socio-cultural anthropology, multilingualism, code-switching (especially in computer-mediated communication) and corpus linguistics.
You can contact Laura at: [email protected]
Professor David Britain studied Linguistics, French and German at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England (1983-87), before beginning a UK Economic and Social Research Council-sponsored PhD in sociolinguistics at the University of Essex in Colchester, England for which he investigated the linguistic consequences of dialect contact in the reclaimed Fenland of East Anglia. In 1991 he began a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Linguistics (now School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies) of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. There he was part of a research team (along with Prof. Janet Holmes, Prof. Allan Bell and Dr. Mary Boyce) undertaking the first large-scale social dialect analysis of New Zealand English. He returned to the University of Essex as a Lecturer in 1993, but retained his links with the Southern Hemisphere, as a British Academy-sponsored Visiting Scholar at Victoria University in 1996 and again in 1998, this time sponsored by the British Council, and as a visiting Scholar at the University of Sydney in 2000. In 2002 he became Senior Lecturer at Essex. Since January 2010 he holds the Chair of Modern English Linguistics here at the University of Bern. Dave is Associate Editor of the Journal of Sociolinguistics, co-author of Linguistics: an introduction (Cambridge University Press, second edition, 2009) (with Andrew Radford, Martin Atkinson, Harald Clahsen and Andrew Spencer), editor of Language in the British Isles (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and co-editor (with Jenny Cheshire) of Social Dialectology (Benjamins, 2003). He has co-edited a special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language on dialect death in Europe with Dr Reinhild Vandekerckhove (Universiteit Antwerpen in Belgium) and Dr Willy Jongenburger (Meertens Institut, Amsterdam, the Netherlands), published in 2009. He has been an invited speaker in France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Australia, Malaysia and the US, as well as New Zealand, the UK and Switzerland.
You can contact Professor Britain at: [email protected]
Christoph Neuenschwander graduated from the University of Bern in 2010, acquiring a lic. phil. hist. in English Linguistics with a focus on intercultural communication, ideology of standardisation, and pidgin and creole languages. This linguistic research interest was complemented by Media Studies and English Literature (focus on postcolonial literature) as minor subjects. He has worked as a journalist, English teacher and “Fachperson Begabungsförderung”, teaching journalism at primary school. In 2013, Christoph Neuenschwander started his PhD project at the University of Bern, examining language ideological debates about pidgins and creoles. The project concentrates on two Pacific creoles, which have a history as plantation lingua francas, but – supposedly – have developed very differently in terms of their status and function within their communities: Hawai’i Creole and Tok Pisin. The aim of the project is to look at the meta-linguistic discourses that have facilitated (or slowed down) the legitimisation and standardisation processes of these two languages. Other research interests include prescriptivism and purism in the history of English, cultural linguistics, ideological debates in creole studies, and the different conceptualisations of culture in the field of linguistics.
You can contact Christoph at: [email protected]
Laura Tresch graduated from the University of Oxford in 2013, acquiring an MA in English Linguistics with a focus on sociolinguistics, language attitudes and dialectology. Prior to this, she obtained a BA in English languages and literatures, and Russian languages and literatures from the University of Lausanne. Laura is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Bern as part of the SNSF funded project Contact, Mobility and Authenticity: Language Ideologies in Creolisation and Koinéisation, under the supervision of Professor David Britain. Her PhD project focuses on examining the changing language ideologies that lead to the authentication and legitimisation of new dialects, by analysing the public metalinguistic discourses that revolve around two such dialects: New Zealand English, and the Englishes of South-East England.
Laura has experience as a teaching assistant in Modern English Linguistics at the University of Bern, as an English teacher for a programme supported by the Department of Education, Culture and Sport, as a Matura expert for English exams in the Canton of Bern, and as a translator. Her main other research interests are language attitudes, language and the media, the interface between linguistic and socio-cultural anthropology, multilingualism, code-switching (especially in computer-mediated communication) and corpus linguistics.
You can contact Laura at: [email protected]
Professor David Britain studied Linguistics, French and German at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England (1983-87), before beginning a UK Economic and Social Research Council-sponsored PhD in sociolinguistics at the University of Essex in Colchester, England for which he investigated the linguistic consequences of dialect contact in the reclaimed Fenland of East Anglia. In 1991 he began a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Linguistics (now School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies) of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. There he was part of a research team (along with Prof. Janet Holmes, Prof. Allan Bell and Dr. Mary Boyce) undertaking the first large-scale social dialect analysis of New Zealand English. He returned to the University of Essex as a Lecturer in 1993, but retained his links with the Southern Hemisphere, as a British Academy-sponsored Visiting Scholar at Victoria University in 1996 and again in 1998, this time sponsored by the British Council, and as a visiting Scholar at the University of Sydney in 2000. In 2002 he became Senior Lecturer at Essex. Since January 2010 he holds the Chair of Modern English Linguistics here at the University of Bern. Dave is Associate Editor of the Journal of Sociolinguistics, co-author of Linguistics: an introduction (Cambridge University Press, second edition, 2009) (with Andrew Radford, Martin Atkinson, Harald Clahsen and Andrew Spencer), editor of Language in the British Isles (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and co-editor (with Jenny Cheshire) of Social Dialectology (Benjamins, 2003). He has co-edited a special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language on dialect death in Europe with Dr Reinhild Vandekerckhove (Universiteit Antwerpen in Belgium) and Dr Willy Jongenburger (Meertens Institut, Amsterdam, the Netherlands), published in 2009. He has been an invited speaker in France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Australia, Malaysia and the US, as well as New Zealand, the UK and Switzerland.
You can contact Professor Britain at: [email protected]