Sie sind hier: Startseite › Seminar › Mitarbeitende › Axel Bohmann

Axel Bohmann

Dr. Axel Bohmann


bohmannPostdoctoral Research Fellow & Assistant Professor he/his
Chair of English Linguistics | Mair


☎ +49 761 203-3329

R 4105 | KG IV

 

 

 

ACADEMIC BIO

I am an assistant professor at Christian Mair's Chair for English Linguistics. After completing a teaching degree in Freiburg in 2010, I obtained a PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin in 2017. My doctoral dissertation, available as a book from Cambridge University Press, investigates register variation in English worldwide on the basis of ten national sub-corpora of the International Corpus of English (ICE) project.

In Freiburg, I have coordinated the Master's program in English Language and Linguistics until 2022 and am conducting research for my second book project, a study of multilingualism among recently arrived immigrants in Southwestern Germany. I also continue to work on corpus linguistics, computational and statistical methods. Between April 2020 and September 2021, I have been working on the Volkswagen Foundation-funded project "Language as a complex adaptive system: Insights from physical modelling," together with Martin Bohmann and Lars Hinrichs.

Apart from my academic life, I am a long-term member of the maniACTs and take a keen interest in following the student theater scene in Freiburg. Among my other interests are rap music, trail hiking and spending time with my family.

 

PUBLICATIONS

Books

  • (in prep.) Axel Bohmann, Julia Müller, Mirka Honkanen & Miriam Neuhausen. Linguistic Data Science and the English Passive: Modelling Diachronic Developments and Regional Variation (Language, Data Science, and Digital Humanities). Bloomsbury. Manuscript delivery: 31 July 2024.
  • (2019) Axel Bohmann. Variation in English Worldwide: Registers and Global Varieties (Studies in English Language). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Refereed Publications in Books & Journals (*peer-reviewed)

  • (accepted*) Axel Bohmann. “Diatopic variation in digital space: A multidimensional analysis of Texas English Twitter data.” Scandinavian Studies in Language.
  • (accepted*) Axel Bohmann. “Towards ’large and tidy’: Establishing internal structure in megacorpora.”
    In S. Coats & V. Laippala (eds.). The March of Data: Linguistics across Disciplinary Borders (Language, Data Science, and Digital Humanities). Bloomsbury.
  • (accepted*) Axel Bohmann & Lotte Sommerer. “Quantitative methods in historical linguistics.” In R. Hickey (ed.). New Cambridge History of the English Language, [Vol II. M. Kytö, E. Smitterberg (eds.). Documentation, Sources of Data and Modelling]. Cambridge University Press.
  • (accepted*) Axel Bohmann. “Codeswitching in the Caribbean.” In K. Bolton (ed.). The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopaedia of World Englishes.
  • (2023*) Axel Bohmann. “Future-time reference in world Englishes.” World Englishes (early view). https://doi.org/10.1111/weng.12634.
  • (2023*) Axel Bohmann & Adesoji Babalola. “Verbal past inflection in Nigerian English: A case for sociolinguistic compound vision.” In G. Wilson & M. Westphal (eds.). New Englishes, New Methods. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 16-41. https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g68.02boh.
  • (2023*) Axel Bohmann, Julia Müller, Mirka Honkanen & Miriam Neuhausen. “A large-scale diachronic analysis of the English passive alternation.” In B. Busse, N. Dumrukci & I. Kleiber (eds.). Language and Linguistics in a Complex World (Discourse Patterns 32). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 11-30. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111017433-003.
  • (2023*) Axel Bohmann. “Contrastive usage profiling: A word vector perspective on World Englishes.” In Beatrix Busse & Ingo Warnke (eds.) Language and Linguistics in a Complex World. De Gruyter. In B. Busse, N. Dumrukcic & I. Kleiber (eds.). Language and Linguistics in a Complex World (Discourse Patterns 32). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 31-55. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111017433-002.
  • (2023) Axel Bohmann. Review article of [P. Rautionaho, H. Parviainen, M. Kaunisto & A. Nurmi (eds.), Social
    and Regional Variation in World Englishes: Local and Global Perspectives (Routledge Studies in Sociolinguistics). New York and London: Routledge, 2023]. English Language and Linguistics (online first). https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674323000217
  • (2022*) Axel Bohmann & Wiebke Ahlers. “Stance in narration: Finding structure in complex sociolinguistic variation.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 26(1), 65-83. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12533.
  • (2022*) Axel Bohmann. “ICE corpora, register, and omitted variable bias: A multidimensional perspective.” In M. Krug, O. Schützler, F. Vetter & V. Werner (eds.). Perspectives on Contemporary English. Bamberg Studies in English Linguistics. Berlin et al.: Peter Lang.
  • (2021*) Axel Bohmann, Martin Bohmann & Lars Hinrichs. “Dissemination dynamics of receding words: A diachronic case study of whom.” Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2021.654154.
  • (2021*) Axel Bohmann. "Uprooted speakers’ grassroots English: Metalinguistic perspectives of asylum seekers in Germany." In C. Meierkord & E. W. Schneider (eds.). World Englishes at the Grassroots. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 233–254. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474467575-014.
  • (2021*) Axel Bohmann. “Register in World Englishes research.” In B. Schneider & T. Heyd (eds.) Bloomsbury World Englishes, Vol 1: Paradigms. London: Bloomsbury, 80–96. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350065833.0011.
  • (2020*) Axel Bohmann. “Situating Twitter discourse in relation to spoken and written texts: A lectometric analysis.” Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 87(2), 250–284. https://doi.org/10.25162/zdl-2020-0009.
  • (2020*) Lars Hinrichs & Axel Bohmann. “Sociolinguistics.” In S. Adolphs & D. Knight (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of English Language and the Digital Humanities (Routledge Handbooks in English Language Studies). Milton Park: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003031758-16.
  • (2016*) Axel Bohmann. “Grammatical change because Twitter? Factors motivating innovative uses of because across the English-speaking Twittersphere.” In L. Squires (ed.). English in Computer-Mediated Communication: Variation, Representation, and Change (Topics in English Linguistics 93). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 149–178. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110490817-008.
  • (2016*) Axel Bohmann. “‘Nobody canna cross it’: Language-ideological dimensions of hypercorrect speech in Jamaica.” English Language and Linguistics 20(1). 129–152. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674315000374.
  • (2016) Axel Bohmann. “Grammatical Change in English World-Wide” [review article of Collins, Peter (ed.), Grammatical Change in English World-wide, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins 2015]. Journal of English Linguistics 44(4). 378–381. https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424216669984.
  • (2016*) Lars Hinrichs, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi & Axel Bohmann. “Which-hunting and the standard English relative clause.” Language 91(4). 806–836. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2015.0062.
  • (2016*) Lars Hinrichs, Axel Bohmann & Kyle Gorman. “Real-time trends in the Texas English vowel system: F2 trajectory in GOOSE as an index of a variety's ongoing delocalization.” Rice Working Papers in Linguistics 4, http://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/75162.
  • (2011) Axel Bohmann, Patrick Schultz. “Sacred that and wicked which: Prescriptivism and change in the use of English relativizers.” Texas Linguistics Forum 54, 88-101.
  • (2010*) Axel Bohmann. “‘Red mal Deutsch, Hundesohn, ich halt nicht viel vom Spitten’: Cultural pressures and the language of German hip hop.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 58(3), 203-228. https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa.2010.58.3.203.

 

Outreach and Science Communication

 

TALKS

Invited Talks

  • “Anglophone West-African asylum seekers in Germany: Linguistic repertoires and lived experience”
    Language Shift Discussion Group
    Online, 17 February 2023.
  • “Adventures in multidimensional analysis”
    Quantitative Methoden in den Digital Humanities | Graduate lecture, instructor: Andreas Baumann
    Universität Wien, 16 November 2022.
  • “Collocational profiles of gendered pronoun subjects across 200 years of American English”
    Wiener Sprachgesellschaft
    Universität Wien,15 November 2022.
  • “Linguistic dynamics of digital diaspora communities: The case of Nairaland”
    Digital Language Variation in Context Lecture Series 2022.
    Universität Hamburg, 27 October 2022. https://lecture2go.uni-hamburg.de/en/l2go/-/get/v/63915
  • “Word dissemination along the S-curve of linguistic change”
    Konstanz Linguistics Research Colloquium
    Universität Konstanz. 30 June 2022.
  • “Diatopic variation in digital space: What Twitter can tell us about Texas dialect areas”
    (with Alex Rosenfeld and Lars Hinrichs)
    Linguistic variation in European languages – New perspectives on diasystematic variation at the occasion of the centenary of Coseriu’s birth (1921-2021)
    University of Copenhagen, 25 November 2021
  • “The promise of nine decades’ worth of interviews: Building the Digital Archive of Texas English Speech"
    (with Lars Hinrichs)
    DIGI Colloquium
    University of Georgia, 22 January 2021
  • “The Sloth, the Ant, and the Invisible Hand: Linguists Looking to Physicists for Help”
    Ursin group retreat
    Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of the Sciences, 09 October 2020
  • “Researching New Englishes with Twitter”
    New Englishes, New Methods, New Modes: Researching New Englishes
    Online, 19 June 2020.
  • “Language and the Nobel Prize in Physics”
    Geisteswissenschaften in den 2020ern / Humanities in the 2020s | Workshop at FRIAS
    Universität Freiburg, 19 February 2020
  • “English on Twitter worldwide"
    Language and the media | Undergraduate class, instructor: Lars Hinrichs
    The University of Texas at Austin, 19 March 2018
  • “‘Nobody Canna Cross it’: Jamaican sociolinguistics, language ideologies, and speaky spoky"
    Critical Issues in Linguistics | Lecture series
    Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 19 April 2016
  • “‘Nobody Canna Cross it’: Styling hyper-correct speech in Jamaica"
    English-based Pidgins and Creoles around the World | undergraduate class, instructor: Danae Perez
    University of Zurich, 24 November 2014
  • “Language change because Internet? A variationist examination of because X on Twitter"
    British English and American English: Corpus-Based Comparisons | Undergraduate class, instructor: Lars Hinrichs
    Universität Augsburg, 3 June 2014
  • “Language ideological dimensions of hyper-correct speech in Jamaica"
    Colloquium at the Department of Culture and Identity
    Roskilde University, 14 May 2013

 

Refereed Conference Presentations

  • “The discursive construction of gender: Verb phrases with SHE/HE subjects in different varieties of English”
    ISLE 7, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 19 June 2023.
  • “Women sew and men thunder: Gendered pronoun subjects as a window into culture”
    BICLCE 9. Univerza v Ljubljani, Ljubljana, 16 September 2022.
  • “A dynamic perspective on diasporic social media communication”
    (with Fatlum Sadiku and Panagiota Papavasileiou).
    BICLCE 9, Univerza v Ljubljani, Ljubljana, 15 September 2022.
  • “Genre coherence and distinctiveness in the International Corpus of English: A quantitative approach”
    Methods in Dialectology XVII. Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, 05 August 2022.
  • “Register variation in Reddit comments - A multidimensional analysis”
    (with Kyla McConnell, Hanna Mahler, Gustavo Maccori Kozma and Rafaela Tosin)
    Poster presentation at CMC-Corpora 2021, Radboud University, Nijmegen (Netherlands), 25 October 2021
  • “Texas English on Twitter: Beyond lexical-geographic variation"
    NWAV 49,The University of Texas at Austin, 23 October 2021.
  • “Initiation of the Low-Back Merger Shift in Texas English: Testing Mechanistic Accounts”
    (with Lars Hinrichs)
    NWAV 49, The University of Texas at Austin, 21 October 2021
  • “‘Jamaica is not the only Jamaica’ – Language and place on YouTube.”
    ISLE 6, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, 02 June 2021
  • “Varieties of English worldwide: A lexical-semantic perspective”
    ICAME 41, Heidelberg University, 20-23 May 2020
  • “A large-scale diachronic analysis of the English passive alternation”
    (with Julia  Julia Müller, Mirka Honkanen & Miriam Neuhausen)
    ICAME 41, Heidelberg University, 20-23 May 2020
  • “A diachronic look at the English passive: Distributional semantics of BE vs GET”
    (with Julia Müller, Miriam Neuhausen & Mirka Honkanen)
    Poster presentation at IRG 2020, Fribourg (CH), 6-8 February 2020
  • “Like finding that one tree in a forest: Markers of stance in narration”
    (with Wiebke Ahlers)
    Poster presentation at NWAV 48, University of Oregon, Eugene, 11 October 2019
  • “ICE corpora, register, and omitted variable bias: A multidimensional perspective”
    BICLCE 8, University of Bamberg, 28 September 2019
  • “‘Like she says like I -like’: Markers of stance in narration”
    (with Wiebke Ahlers)
    SLE 52, Leipzig University, 21 August 2019
  • “Asylum seekers’ discursive construction of communicative breakdowns”
    iMean6, Victoria University of Wellington, 17 April 2019
  • “Global system, local langscape: The interplay of emergent norms and perduring indexical relations in asylum seekers’ ELF communication”
    ELF 11, King's College, London, 7 July 2018
  • “Dimensions of variation in World Englishes”
    ISLE 5, University College London July 18, 2018
  • “Orienting towards German with English linguistic resources: Observations on the communicative repertoires of English-speaking asylum seekers in Germany”
    ISLE 5, University College London, 17 July 2018
  • “When communication fails: Asylum seekers’ discursive construction of communicative breakdowns”
    Zurich Conference on Colonial and Postcolonial Language Studies – Changes and Challenges, University of Zurich, 5 June 2018
  • “Geographic and register variation in World Englishes: Methodological issues”
    Workshop Statistical standards for scientific discovery in linguistics: a practical introduction, University of Zurich, 6 June 2017
  • “Investigating geographic and register variation in World Englishes”
    ICLaVE 9, Málaga, 6 June 6 2017
  • “A cross-varietal study of (ing) in written computer-mediated discourse”
    Sociolinguistics Symposium 21, Universidad de Murcia, 17 June 2016
  • “Mapping the social meanings of /str/-palatalization in Texas English”
    (with Lars Hinrichs, Wiebke Ahlers, Alexander Bergs, Erica Brozovsky, Kirsten Meemann & Patrick Schultz)
    Poster presentation at Sociolinguistics Symposium 21, Universidad de Murcia, 17 June 2016
  • “Sibilants and ethnic diversity: A sociophonetic study of palatalized /s/ in STR clusters among Hispanic, White, and African-American speakers of Texas and Pittsburgh English”
    (with Lars Hinrichs, Erica Brozovsky, Noli Chew, Kirsten Meemann & Patrick Schultz)
    Texas Linguistic Society 16, The University of Texas at Austin, 19 February 2016
  • “Sibilants and ethnic diversity: A sociophonetic study of palatalized /s/ in STR clusters among Hispanic, White, and African-American speakers of Texas and Pittsburgh English”
    (with Lars Hinrichs, Alexander Bergs, Erica Brozovsky, Brian Hodge, Kirsten Meemann & Patrick Schultz)
    NWAV 44, University of Toronto, 23 October 2015
  • “Enquoting voices on Twitter: A multi-local study of quotative be + like in computer-mediated discourse”
    BICLCE 6, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 20 August 2015
  • “‘Nobody Canna Cross it’: Ideological Aspects of Hyper-correct Speech in Jamaica”
    GAPS 2015, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 16 May 2015
  • “Which-hunting and the Standard English relative clause”
    (with Lars Hinrichs & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi)
    iMean 4, The University of Warwick, 11 April 2015
  • “Enquoting voices on Twitter: A multi-local analysis of be + like in computer-mediated discourse”
    ISLE 3, University of Zurich,  26 August 2014
  • “Null complementizers in Spanish and the use of Twitter as a tool for corpus-based linguistic research”
    (with Adrian Riccelli)
    Workshop on Social and Business Analytics, The University of Texas at Austin, 28 March 2014
  • “The interactional dynamics of speaky spoky”
    ICLCE 5, The University of Texas at Austin, 27 September 2013
  • “Unusually strong impact of prescriptive rules on language use: The case of object-function restrictive relativizers in written Standard English”
    (with Lars Hinrichs & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi)
    The Fourth Conference on Prescriptivism, Universiteit Leiden, 12 June 2013
  • “Discourse in motion: A mixed-methods case study from Jamaica”
    ISLE (Post-)Doctoral Spring School, University of Freiburg (Germany), 15 April 2013
  • “Dialect leveling in Texas English: A mixed-method approach to real-time change in the goose vowel”
    (with Lars Hinrichs)
    SALSA 21, The University of Texas at Austin, 13 April 2013
  • “Degree of fronting and F2 trajectory type in the Central Texas goose vowel“
    (with Lars Hinrichs)
    NWAV 41, Indiana University Bloomington, 27 October 2012
  • “The contested role of African American English in German rap discourse”
    Hip Hop Literacies, Ohio State University, Columbus, 10 May 2012
  • “The /u/s of Texas: goose-fronting in 1980s Austin speech”
    SALSA 20, The University of Texas at Austin, 14 April 2012
  • “Local appropriations of global English: The case of German hip hop culture”
    ICLCE IV, Universität Osnabrück, 21 July 2011
  • “Sacred that and wicked which: Prescriptivism and change in the use of relativizers”
    SALSA 19, The University of Texas at Austin, 16 April 2011
  • “Origins of the American short story: ‘The desperate negroe’”
    Black Odyssey Continued – International Symposium of American Studies, Palacký University, Olomouc (Czech Republic), 14 November 2009

 

TEACHING