Forensic Pragmatics is a (new) branch of Applied Linguistics that involves the examination of spoken or written language evidence against its situational and/or interactional background. During this seminar, we will look at specimen of threatening communication from different historical and contemporary varieties of English, and we will focus on the question of how meaning and implied meaning are construed, how the effect of threatening is achieved and what kind of evidence may assist in the identification of suspects.

In this research seminar we will examine linguistic markers and communicative practices of drag queens as portrayed within the reality TV show ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’, ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’, ' RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under' and 'Canada's Drag Race'. Based on a purpose-built corpus of several episodes/seasons of the show from four (mainly) ENL contexts, we will identify linguistic features on the morpho-syntactic, lexical and pragmatic levels that are utilised in the linguistic construction of drag identity. We will then ponder the question of whether the features used are variety-specific or whether they could be indicative of a more global phenomenon of gendered language use.

A student excursion to Berlin is planned as part of this seminar.
The excursion will take place from June 10th to June 12th, 2024 for a maximum of 16 students and, in addition to an interview with drag artists prepared and conducted together with students from Humboldt University, also includes a visit to a drag show and a subsequent critical research discussion.

Forensic Pragmatics is a (new) branch of Applied Linguistics that involves the examination of spoken or written language evidence against its situational and/or interactional background. During this seminar, we will look at specimen of threatening communication from different historical and contemporary varieties of English, and we will focus on the question of how meaning and implied meaning are construed, how the effect of threatening is achieved and what kind of evidence may assist in the identification of suspects.