Convenors: Aishee Bhattacharya, Yvette Wang, Dr. Clay Becker

When: Every Wednesday,16:00-17:00 (UK time) during term time

Where: R1.13 and MS teams

09.10.2024, 16:00 - 17:00

Understanding China’s digital feminism: Struggles, resilience, and businesses

Dr Altman Peng, University of Warwick

Abstract

Despite enduring persistent crackdowns on feminist activism, China’s civil society actors have shown remarkable resilience by leveraging digital technologies to continue advocating for their causes. This talk situates the discussion within the Chinese context while acknowledging its connection to global feminist momentum. It explores the dynamics of gender power struggles on the Chinese-language Internet and their dialectical relations with the nation’s sociopolitical climate and technoeconomic infrastructure. The analysis highlights how diverse civil society actors, including but not limited to NGOs, public intellectuals, digital influencers, and grassroots social media users, respond to the visible resurgence of patriarchy in present-day China. By examining both intellectual and grassroots discourses, the discussion evaluates their implications for the progress or regression of gender equality and justice in the nation. It is hoped that the discussion will serve as a useful foundation for future Chinese feminist studies in the context of social-mediated communication.

Bio

Altman Yuzhu Peng, PhD, is Associate Professor of Intercultural Communication based in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the School of Education, Learning and Communication Sciences, University of Warwick. His research interests lie at the intersections of critical discourse studies, feminism, media and cultural studies, and masculinity studies. He has authored a book, co-edited two anthologies, and published over 30 scholarly articles in respected peer-reviewed outlets. He currently serves on the editorial boards of such noted academic journals as Feminist Media Studies and is frequently cited by ABC, AFP, BBC, and The Wall Street Journal for his expert opinion.

16.10.24.2024,16:00 - 17:00

(Mis)managing relationships and rapport: An updated framework for analysis

Prof. Helen Spencer, University of Warwick

Abstract

Several years ago, a guest speaker at Warwick Business School, who was talking about the language of leaders, mentioned the importance of relationships. He did not develop it, though, and maintained that there was no framework for understanding relationship management. Following up afterwards, I realised that most politeness theory work is aimed at linguists and there is a need for an accessible framework for non-specialists that is also meaningful for specialists. My TRIPS framework is the result of my recent thinking and research on this. TRIPS is an acronym for the key factors that need to be taken into account when managing rapport. In this talk I describe what these factors are, illustrating them with a range of case studies and explaining their role in the politeness evaluation process.

Bio

Helen Spencer-Oatey is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick and Managing Director of GlobalPeople Consulting Ltd. (GPC). Her academic background is in both psychology and pragmatics and through her experiences of living and working abroad for a large part of her career (much of it in China), she developed research interests in communicating and relating in contexts of diversity. In addition to many journal articles in these areas, her publications include the books Making Working Relationships Work (with Lazidou, Castledown 2024), Global Fitness for Global People (with Franklin & Lazidou, Castledown 2022), Intercultural Politeness: Managing Relations across Cultures (with Kádár, Cambridge University Press, 2021), Intercultural Interaction (with Franklin, Palgrave, 2009) and Culturally Speaking (Bloomsbury 2000/2008. She is currently focusing on the applied relevance of her research, developing a wide range of diagnostic, training and development resources for use by professionals.

23.10.2024, 16:00 - 17:00

“Basically, the possibilities are limitless”: zine-making as a data collection tool in narrative inquiry

Meifang Zhuo, University of Warwick

30.10.2024, 16:00-17:00

Risk negotiation in prehospital critical care dispatch: an Interactional Sociolinguistics approach 

Dr. Shawnea Sum Pok TING

Abstract

Communicating risk is interactionally complex, not to mention in high-stakes, time-pressured situations. Under-researched is risk negotiation for dispatch in emergency medical services (EMS), especially for pre-hospital critical care, which has significant impact on patient safety and cost-effective use of the services. The 999 R.E.S.P.O.N.D. project is the first in the UK to address this gap through looking at emergency medical dispatch as a multi-actor system and capturing risk negotiation among key stakeholders. In this talk we focus on a core linguistic act, that of questioning. Questioning has visibility and established tradition in medical practice and in the context of 999 talks it is highly regulated. We present two question designs that are recurrent in our data: closed and open questions and we show the impact of the scripted systems on the management of the interactional floor between the caller and call handler. We close the paper with the implication of our findings on training medical professionals on linguistic acts.

Bio

Shawnea Sum Pok TING, PhD, is Research Fellow in the Department of Applied Linguistics at University of Warwick. She conducts interdisciplinary, qualitative research in healthcare, specifically on service-user/provider communication and interprofessional communication. Currently, she is part of a team that uses the Interactional Sociolinguistics approach to analyse risk negotiation and decision making for dispatch in Emergency Medical Services. For her doctoral research at Goldsmiths, University of London, Shawnea adopted Reflexive Thematic Analysis with techniques from Conversation Analysis to study lived experience of patient communication between ethnic minorities and local healthcare providers in Hong Kong from a (Medical) English as a Lingua Franca perspective. Shawnea also served as a patient and public involvement (PPI) member in research using qualitative (and art) methods to improve relationships in healthcare.

06.11.2024, 16:00 - 17:00

Dr. Katharine Weetman, University of Birmingham

13.11.2024, 16:00 - 17:00

Dr. Jasmin Peskoller, University of Innsbruck

20.11.2024, 16:00 - 17:00

Yanyan Li, University of Warwick

27.11.2024, 16:00 - 17:00

Prof. Ema Ushioda, University of Warwick