On how to be racist
— Don’t worry, this is not an actual tutorial but looks at how racism is part of social media postings and how we perceive that.
Blog >> 'Language Matters!' Exciting insights into the realm of Applied Linguistics
“You cannot possibly be that arrogant!” – Impoliteness in The Big Bang Theory
— A linguistics workshop at the Gymnasium zum Altenforst in Troisdorf.
LaMa talk at Dies Academicus
At this semester’s Academic Open Day (Dies Academicus) on 17 May we had the opportunity to present the LaMa blog and school cooperation project to the interested public. MA student Hanna Bruns, secondary school teacher Timo Brede and BAEL staff members Stefanie Pohle and Pawel Sickinger gave a talk titled:...
Hidden benefits of a stay abroad
…or: what the ability to quickly name pictures has got to do with speaking two languages. When learning a foreign language at school, we are often told that we should go to the country where that language is spoken. Many German pupils are sent to Great Britain, because, as their...
A professor in the desert: Linguistic fieldwork in Namibia
How is English used in Namibia? What do Namibians say to complain or apologize? How do they make an offer or engage in small talk? Answers to these questions are best found by going to Namibia to collect language data, of course. Two months ago, in March 2017, I went...
LaMa goes school
Dear authors of the LaMa-Blog, Introducing linguistic topics to 16-18 year old pupils seems to be a very challenging task: Terms and aspects like “Broca’s and Wernicke’s area”, “aphasia”, “prosodic features”, “discourse markers” or “ideological square” do not necessarily catch the attention of teenagers, so I was very curious how...
Ups? The look has gone…
Shock, suprise, suppressed swearing… I have no clue what happened, but fact is our LaMa design has gone! I’m busy trying to restore it asap. All I have is a screenshot of the original look: Bear with me… UPDATE: I have spent the past two hours trying to restore...
Precision landing: LaMa-Blog officially launched!
Wednesday, 8 February 2017, 10.30am, conference room in Walter-Flex-Straße 3, Bonn: The pupils from our partner school Gymnasium zum Altenforst (GAT) have arrived with their teacher Mr. Brede, Prof. K. P. Schneider is there, and so is my colleague Pawel Sickinger. The MA students have set up their laptops, ready...
LAnguage MAtters: Our Logo and mascot
We at BAEL love acronyms… if they make up an existing noun (albeit with a slightly different spelling), even better! This cute Lama logo was created by my colleague Pawel Sickinger, who is not only a great linguist but also a talented illustrator! Without giving too much away before the...
The Final Countdown
(Image: Pixabay CC0) The semester is almost over, so everyone’s extremely busy: students are learning for the upcoming exams, and teaching staff like myself are pondering about the most suitable exam questions, helping students find or narrow down their term paper topics during office hours, planning our courses for the...
Official launch of the blog
In case you wonder why some posts are password protected, and others appear only to disappear again after a couple of days: Don’t worry! Our blog is currently ‘work-in-progress’. The MA students are busy writing their posts, providing each other feedback, waiting for comments from the test readers (pupils from...
Are you already a competent speaker of English?
You might have already experienced some awkward or funny misunderstandings when speaking English or another foreign language with native speakers. Misunderstandings or pragmatic failure in a foreign language between members of different cultural backgrounds and languages are very frequent. They occur when people greet each other, when they apologize...
