Dr. Michael Westphal

Professur für Variationslinguistik (Prof. Deuber)
Dr. Michael Westphal

Johannisstr. 12-20, room 322
48143 Münster

T: +49 251 83-24298

Consultation Hours

my office hours are Wednesday 10-12 via zoomsign up via doodle and I will send you the Zoom details via mail(zoom details are also available @learnweb)
https://doodle.com/meeting/participate/id/YerL2J2b

Academic Profile:

  • Research Foci

    • Varieties of English
    • Creole languages
    • Sociolinguistics
    • Language in the media
    • Variational Pragmatics
    • Language attitudes
    • Linguistic Landscaping

  • Doctoral AbstractThesis

    Linguistic variation in Jamaican radio

    Supervisor
    Professor Dr. Dagmar Deuber
    Doctoral Subject
    Englische Philologie
    Doctoral Degree
    Dr. phil.
    Awarded by
    Department 09 – Philologies
    In recent years interest in media texts as sources for sociolinguistic analysis has grown but the media domain remains underresearched for Creole using communities. A study taking into account the comprehensive range of varieties, from Creole to Standard with the often diffuse distribution, and their interaction is missing. For Jamaica and the wider Anglophone Caribbean, radio broadcasting is the mass media genre with the most diverse linguistic variation – various varieties come into conflict on the air but also complement each other. This complex variation proves radio broadcasting in Jamaica very worthwhile for linguistic research. The aim of this PhD project is to detect the varieties used on the air, analyze their interaction, and study how this linguistic variation is constrained. In order to establish a more comprehensive picture of the linguistic variation on the air, the project combines the analysis of different aspects of radio broadcasting: The radio texts themselves are analyzed, the production of radio texts is taken into account and the project also seeks to find out how the listeners perceive the linguistic variation in radio broadcasting in Jamaica.

  • CV

    Academic Education

    Post-doc University of Münster
    Phd University of Münster
    M.A. University of Freiburg
    Exchange student at the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica

    Positions

    Acting Professor for English Language Teaching at the University of Greifswald
    Research assistant, Chair of variation linguistics, University of Münster

    Honors

    Dissertationspreis – Deutscher Anglistenverband
    GAPS Graduate Award – Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies
    Faculty award 2009 of the Philological Faculty of the University of Freiburg for the MA thesis A History of Jamaican Creole in the Jamican Broadcasting Media – Philologic Faculty of the University of Freiburg

    External Functions

    Discourse-Pragmatic Variation & Change (DiPVaC) Research network
    Deutscher Anglistenverband e.V.
    ISLE The International Society for the Linguistics of English
    Treasurer of GAPS (Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies)
    GAPS (Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies)

  • Teaching

    • Seminar: The Politics of English [090777]
    • Seminar: Teaching Nigeria [090850]
    • Seminar: National and Transnational Aspects of English Worldwide [090866]
    • Colloquium: Postgraduate Class: (Linguistics) [090870]
    • Lecture: Introduction to Pragmatics [099056]
    • Seminar: Teaching Nigeria [099129]
    • Seminar: National and Transnational Aspects of English Worldwide [093045]
      (in cooperation with Dr. Ka Lau)
    • Seminar: The Politics of English [093046]
    • Seminar: Global Englishes Language Teaching [092988]
    • Colloquium: Postgraduate Class (Linguistics) [093017]
      (in cooperation with Dr. Ka Lau)
    • Seminar: Global Englishes Language Teaching (nicht G) [090726]
    • Colloquium: Postgraduate Class (Linguistics) [090748]
    • Workshop: Independent Study Group (Linguistics)
    • Seminar: Teaching English as an International Language [098680]
    • Seminar: National and Transnational Aspects of English Worldwide [098733]
      (in cooperation with Dr. Ka Lau)
    • Colloquium: Postgraduate Class (Linguistics) [098738]
      (in cooperation with Dr. Ka Lau)
    • Lecture: The evolution of Englishes [096669]
    • Seminar: World Englishes in the English language classroom [096671]
    • Workshop: Global Englishes in English Language Teaching in Germany
      (in cooperation with Dr. Philipp Meer)
    • Workshop: Linguistic Workshop
    • Seminar: National and Transnational Aspects of English Worldwide [094717]
      (in cooperation with Dr. Ka Lau)
    • Seminar: World Englishes in the English language classroom [094668]
    • Colloquium: Postgraduate Class (Linguistics) [094720]
      (in cooperation with Dr. Ka Lau)
    • Workshop: Linguistic Workshop
      (in cooperation with Dr. Philipp Meer)
    • Lecture: The evolution of Englishes [092621]
      (in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Dagmar Deuber)
    • Seminar: Sociolinguistics [092750]
    • Seminar: World Englishes [092758]
      (in cooperation with Dr. Ka Lau and Johanna Hartmann)
    • Lecture: Current Approaches to World Englishes [090753]
      (in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Dagmar Deuber)
    • Seminar: Sociolinguistics [090755]
    • Seminar: National and Transnational Aspects of English Worldwide [090765]
      (in cooperation with Johanna Hartmann)
    • Seminar: Variation in Englishes - corpus linguistic perspectives [098766]
      (in cooperation with Eva Hänsel)
    • Seminar: Sociolinguistics [098769]
    • Colloquium: Promotionskolleg Empirische Angewandte Sprachwissenschaft
      (in cooperation with Eva Hänsel)
    • Seminar: Language attitudes and ideologies [096823]
    • Seminar: National and Transnational Aspects of English Worldwide [096831]
      (in cooperation with Eva Hänsel)
    • Seminar: Linguistic Landscaping Münster [096779]
    • Seminar: Language attitudes and ideologies [094842]
    • Seminar: English in the Caribbean [094791]
      (in cooperation with Eva Hänsel)
    • Seminar: National and Transnational Aspects of English Worldwide [092865]
      (in cooperation with Eva Hänsel)
    • Seminar: Language attitudes and ideologies [092831]
    • Colloquium: Postgraduate Class (Linguistics) [092842]
    • Seminar: Standardization, standard Englishes and destandardization [096689]
    • Seminar: National and Transnational Aspects of English Worldwide [096547]
    • Seminar: Standardization, standard Englishes and destandardization [095217]
    • Practice: Communicating Linguistic Methods and Theories (Gruppe I - BLOCKTERMIN) [094102]
    • Seminar: From Old English to Standard English [095947]
    • Practice: Communicating Linguistic Methods and Theories (Gruppe I) [095859]
    • Seminar: From Old English to Standard Englishes [096076]
    • Practice: Linguistic Analysis/ Empirical Methods: Gruppe IV [095689]
    • Introductory seminar: Language and Gender [095030]
    • Introductory seminar: English in Jamaica [095070]

  • Project

  • Publications

  • Talks

    • Westphal, Michael : “Variational Pragmatics and World Englishes: Speech acts and discourse markers”. Guest lecture, University of Bremen, Germany, .
    • Westphal, Michael; Hehner, Stefanie; Meer, Philipp : “Global Englishes in Language Teaching”. Online Sprachentag Mecklenburg-Vorpommern , Fachverband Moderne Fremdsprachen M-V, Germany, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Multilingual question tags in Nigerian and Philippine English”. Current Trends in Linguistics Conference (CuTLi), University of Hamburg, Germany, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Eh across Englishes: A corpus-pragmatic analysis of the GloWbE corpus”. 6th International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE) conference, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “The multilingual pragmatics of New Englishes: Question tags in Nigerian English”. New Methods for Pragmatics of New Englishes, online, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim and University of Paderborn, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Language and nationalism: The nationalist ideology of monolingualism in postcolonial theory”. Lecture Series at the Centre for English Language Studies, University of Hyderabad, India, .
    • Wilson, Guyanne; Westphal, Michael : “Creole and power: A Critical Discourse Analysis of legal cross-examinations in ICE Trinidad and Tobago and ICE Jamaica”. Stylistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, and Language Use in the Caribbean, The University of Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad and Tobago, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Variational Pragmatics and World Englishes: Questionnaires and corpora”. Guest lecture, University of Bremen, Germany, .
    • Westphal, Michael; Hartmann, Johanna; Deuber, Dagmar; Lau, Kan Man; Meer, Philipp : “Vocalic variation in Standard English spoken by Trinidadian professionals”. BICLCE 2019 - 8th Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English, University of Bamberg, Germany, .
    • Jansen, Lisa; Westphal, Michael : “Performing Caribbean identity in pop music: Rihanna & Nicki Minaj”. 2nd Bremen Student Conference in English Linguistics, University of Bremen, Germany, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Question Tags across Englishes and text types: A corpus-pragmatic analysis”. IAWE 24, University of Limerick, Ireland, .
    • Wilson, Guyanne; Westphal, Michael : “New Englishes New Methods: Language Attitude Research on Caribbean Englishes”. IAWE 24, University of Limerick, Ireland, .
    • Meer, Philipp; Westphal Michael : “2nd network meeting: Global Englishes in ELT in Germany”. ., University of Münster, Germany, .
    • Hehner, Stefanie; Meer, Philipp; Callies, Marcus; Westphal, Michael : “Workshop: Global Englishes and challenges for English language teaching and teacher education in higher education in Germany”. 7th Bremen Symposium on language learning and teaching at universities. Rethinking the language learner. , University of Bremen, Germany, .
    • Westphal, Michael; Meer, Philipp : “Workshop: Language Attitude Research in the Caribbean”. ., University of Muenster, Germany, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Tag questions in different varieties of English and text types: A pragmatic perspective on corpus-based sociolinguistics”. , Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, Hungary, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Tag questions in Trinidadian and Philippine English: A corpus-pragmatic analysis of form, function, and text type variation”. , University of Tampere, Finland, .
    • Jansen, Lisa; Westphal, Michael : “Caribbean queen? Rihanna and Nicki Minaj’s multivocal pop personas”. , University of Münster, Germany, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “The nationalist ideology of monolingualism in postcolonial theory.” , University of Mainz, Germany, .
    • Jansen, Lisa; Westphal, Michael : “Caribbean queen? Rihanna and Nicki Minaj’s multivocal pop personas”. Lecture Series Hotspots in Literary/Cultural Studies and Linguistics, University of Münster, Münster, Germany., .
    • Westphal, Michael : “New Englishes - New Methods”. , University of Vigo, Spain, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Pragmatic variation in World Englishes: The use of tag questions in Trinidadian and Philippine English”. , University of Vigo, Spain, .
    • Jansen, Lisa; Westphal, Michael : “Caribbean queen? Rihanna and Nicki Minaj’s multivocal pop personae”. , University of Vigo, Spain, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Linguistic Variation in Jamaican Radio Newscasts”. Guest lecture, University of Kiel, Germany, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Pre-conference Workshop: Language attitude research”. , University of Münster, Germany, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Introduction to Language Attitude Research”. Guest lecture, University of Freiburg, Germany, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “The global spread of Jamaican Creole in reggae subculture”. 4th International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE) conference, University of Poznań, Poland, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Linguistic and cultural appropriation of reggae and dancehall in Germany”. 27th GAPS annual conference: The Postcolonial and the Material, University of Augsburg, Germany, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Linguistic variation in Jamaican radio newscasts”. , University of Hamburg, Germany, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Linguistic destandardization processes in Jamaican radio”. 3rd International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE) Conference, University of Zurich (UZH), Switzerland, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Linguistic decolonization processes in Jamaican radio”. 15th Triennial Conference of The European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (EACLALS): Uncommon Wealths Riches and Realities , University of Innsbruck, Austria, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Perceptions of Standard Englishes in Jamaican radio newscasting”. Englishes Today: Theoretical and methodological issues, University of Vigo, Spain, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Attitudes towards different accents of English in Jamaican radio newscasting”. 5th International conference on the linguistics of contemporary English (ICLCE 5), University of Texas Austin, USA, .
    • Wilson, Guyanne; Westphal, Michael; Hartmann, Johanna; Deuber, Dagmar : “The use of question tags in different registers of English in Trinidad”. 5th International conference on the linguistics of contemporary English (ICLCE 5), University of Texas Austin, USA, .
    • Westphal, Michael : “Emancipation from and reinvention of the linguistic metropolis in a post -colonial speech community”. 24th GAPS annual conference: Reinventing the postcolonial (in the) metropolis, Technical University of Chemnitz, Germany, .