Theresa Heyd
Biographic Data
| ID | 652018 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Theresa Heyd |
| GIVEN NAMES | Theresa |
| FAMILY NAME | Heyd |
| SIGNATURE | HEYD T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Heidelberg University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5940-4569 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 52 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Mock Pronouns
This article describes mock pronouns as a predominantly digital discursive practice. The rise of gender-inclusive pronoun sharing has been accompanied by antifeminist, queerphobic and transphobic sentiment in line with current anti-emancipatory backlash in public spheres. Based on data from the social media platforms Twitter and TikTok, this article investigates mock pronouns as a specific digital corollary of such antipronominal discourse, harne…
Ideologies of English, ideologies of gender: Enregisterment of internal and external purism in German language ideologies
This paper seeks to explore the structural, systematic and continued enregisterment of ideologies of English and ideologies of Gendern , constructed as socially salient registers associated with characterological figures in German and German-speaking discourse. Linguistic purism is a longstanding, pervasive and well-documented sentiment in the logic of German-speaking language ideology. In most accounts, emphasis is placed on linguistic purism as…
Voices in the Linguistic Landscape: Anthropomorphization of artifacts and the pronominal construction of speakerhood
This paper contributes to the emerging analytical framework of anthropomorphized artifacts as part of Linguistic Landscapes. It describes and analyzes cases where signage, objects, or related inanimate objects are inscribed with language that includes first-person pronoun usage and thus constructs the notion of speakerhood. We analyze a corpus of over 80 such items and provide qualitative analysis that includes structural aspects such as emergin…
Introduction: Unthinking Language from a Posthumanist Perspective
In this special issue, we inspect material and nonhuman phenomena that contribute to interaction and meaning-making—among them sounds, visual signs, animals, images, digital devices, bodies, and movements—in order to stimulate new thinking surrounding the question of what language is from a posthumanist perspective. The contributors are language-oriented scholars who focus on material and technological environments in language. They interrogate h…
Phonetische Transkription als folklinguistische Zeichen-Praxis im öffentlichen Raum
Diese Studie ist eine erste Erkundung von laienlinguistischer Nutzung phonetischer Transkription im öffentlichen Raum. Dabei handelt es sich um Gebrauchsformen, bei denen das semiotische Repertoire der Transkription – beispielsweise phonetische Symbole und die Klammerung von Lexemen, aber auch Silbentrennung und lexikografische Textstruktur – in der digitalen oder materiellen Öffentlichkeit in einen dekontextualisierten Zusammenhang gebracht w…
First names and sociolinguistic enregisterment: Digital tropes of linguistic mobility
Handstyle as social meaning: Graphic variation, graffiti and gender
The work presented here contributes to a better understanding of graphic variation and its role in the making of social meaning. Specifically, we report on a case study of female-coded graffiti, and how its graphematic and visual rendering undermines dominant street art norms. In early 2018, the inner city of a small German college town was covered with street art with an overt feminist stance, including tropes such as “riot girls” and topics suc…
The Sociolinguistic Economy of Berlin: Cosmopolitan Perspectives on Language, Diversity and Social Space
This volume explores the linguistic diversity and language variation in Berlin. The analytical focus is on the emergence of linguistic, cultural, political and spatial discourses and communities, or discursive and institutional responses to these. The volume provides new insights into language in its local but transnationally conditioned socio-economic embeddedness.
The sociolinguistics of late modern publics
This issue examines struggles over public discursive power in late modern society, understanding that late modern publics are characterized by a destabilization of formerly unmarked public authorities, in other words, an unsettling of standardized "voices from nowhere" (Gal & Woolard, 2001). The contributions to the issue illustrate traditional social and academic elites' discursive reactions to such developments. In the introduction, we outline …
Hashtagging and functional shift: Adaptation and appropriation of the
Narratives of Belonging in the Digital Diaspora: Corpus Approaches to a Cultural Concept
In this study, I examine narratives of belonging through a corpus of digital diasporic discourse. The corpus is based on a Nigerian online discussion forum; its users primarily consist of both local Nigerians and members of the globally dispersed Nigerian diaspora. The study sets out by providing a working definition of narratives of belonging couched in the sociolinguistic tradition of approaching narrative structures. This includes aspects of p…
From Naija to Chitown: The New African Diaspora and digital representations of place
The metacommunicative lexicon of Nigerian Pidgin
This paper reports on a specific lexical field of Nigerian Pidgin (NgP), namely its metacommunicative lexicon. Based on a corpus approach, the study identifies a set of lexical items that refer to acts of communication, in particular verbs of speaking and folk-linguistic labels for varieties and registers that pertain to the use of NgP. This study contributes to our understanding of lexical usage in NgP, a field that is less documented than its p…
Dude, Alter: A tale of two vocatives
This paper takes a cross-linguistic look at two notorious examples of contemporary slang: American English dude and German Alter. Both have received considerable attention in the media and some initial sociolinguistic inquiry. It is shown here that both items share a number of properties, some quite obvious, others subtler and possibly less stable. This includes features from all levels of linguistic analysis and covers both formal and functional…
Folk-linguistic landscapes: The visual semiotics of digital enregisterment
This article analyzes folk-linguistic photo blogging as an example of twenty-first-century grassroots prescriptivism. Photo blogs engaged in grassroots prescriptivism usually focus on one specific linguistic phenomenon and collect visual evidence of its usage. Through the overt or covert language policing involved in such displays, folk-linguistic photo blogs contribute to the digital enregisterment of the linguistic practices they focus on as no…
Doing race and ethnicity in a digital community: Lexical labels and narratives of belonging in a Nigerian web forum
How You Guys Doin'? Staged Orality and Emerging Plural Address in the Television Seriesfriends
This study explores the sociolinguistics of mediated discourse and the use of “staged orality” in such genres. It involves a corpus-driven approximation of you guys as an emerging quasi pronoun for second-person plural address based on dialogue transcriptions of the sitcom Friends. With its 10-year time span and close interactions between its six young New Yorkers, the Friends corpus is a good locus to monitor linguistic variation and change. An …
Understanding and handling unreliable narratives: A pragmatic model and method
This paper explores the pragmatic foundations of unreliable narration (UN), a narrative technique highly popular in western literary texts. It sets out by giving a critique of the competing theoretic frameworks of UN, namely the seminal Boothian concept and more recent constructivist approaches. It is argued that both frameworks neglect a pragmatic perspective as the most viable way for identifying and analysing UN. Such a pragmatic model is then…
Hashtagging and functional shift: Adaptation and appropriation of the
The sociolinguistics of late modern publics
This issue examines struggles over public discursive power in late modern society, understanding that late modern publics are characterized by a destabilization of formerly unmarked public authorities, in other words, an unsettling of standardized "voices from nowhere" (Gal & Woolard, 2001). The contributions to the issue illustrate traditional social and academic elites' discursive reactions to such developments. In the introduction, we outline …
Folk-linguistic landscapes: The visual semiotics of digital enregisterment
This article analyzes folk-linguistic photo blogging as an example of twenty-first-century grassroots prescriptivism. Photo blogs engaged in grassroots prescriptivism usually focus on one specific linguistic phenomenon and collect visual evidence of its usage. Through the overt or covert language policing involved in such displays, folk-linguistic photo blogs contribute to the digital enregisterment of the linguistic practices they focus on as no…
How You Guys Doin'? Staged Orality and Emerging Plural Address in the Television Seriesfriends
This study explores the sociolinguistics of mediated discourse and the use of “staged orality” in such genres. It involves a corpus-driven approximation of you guys as an emerging quasi pronoun for second-person plural address based on dialogue transcriptions of the sitcom Friends. With its 10-year time span and close interactions between its six young New Yorkers, the Friends corpus is a good locus to monitor linguistic variation and change. An …
Introduction: Unthinking Language from a Posthumanist Perspective
In this special issue, we inspect material and nonhuman phenomena that contribute to interaction and meaning-making—among them sounds, visual signs, animals, images, digital devices, bodies, and movements—in order to stimulate new thinking surrounding the question of what language is from a posthumanist perspective. The contributors are language-oriented scholars who focus on material and technological environments in language. They interrogate h…
First names and sociolinguistic enregisterment: Digital tropes of linguistic mobility
From Naija to Chitown: The New African Diaspora and digital representations of place
The metacommunicative lexicon of Nigerian Pidgin
This paper reports on a specific lexical field of Nigerian Pidgin (NgP), namely its metacommunicative lexicon. Based on a corpus approach, the study identifies a set of lexical items that refer to acts of communication, in particular verbs of speaking and folk-linguistic labels for varieties and registers that pertain to the use of NgP. This study contributes to our understanding of lexical usage in NgP, a field that is less documented than its p…
Doing race and ethnicity in a digital community: Lexical labels and narratives of belonging in a Nigerian web forum
Understanding and handling unreliable narratives: A pragmatic model and method
This paper explores the pragmatic foundations of unreliable narration (UN), a narrative technique highly popular in western literary texts. It sets out by giving a critique of the competing theoretic frameworks of UN, namely the seminal Boothian concept and more recent constructivist approaches. It is argued that both frameworks neglect a pragmatic perspective as the most viable way for identifying and analysing UN. Such a pragmatic model is then…
Understanding and handling unreliable narratives: A pragmatic model and method
This paper explores the pragmatic foundations of unreliable narration (UN), a narrative technique highly popular in western literary texts. It sets out by giving a critique of the competing theoretic frameworks of UN, namely the seminal Boothian concept and more recent constructivist approaches. It is argued that both frameworks neglect a pragmatic perspective as the most viable way for identifying and analysing UN. Such a pragmatic model is then…
How You Guys Doin'? Staged Orality and Emerging Plural Address in the Television Seriesfriends
This study explores the sociolinguistics of mediated discourse and the use of “staged orality” in such genres. It involves a corpus-driven approximation of you guys as an emerging quasi pronoun for second-person plural address based on dialogue transcriptions of the sitcom Friends. With its 10-year time span and close interactions between its six young New Yorkers, the Friends corpus is a good locus to monitor linguistic variation and change. An …
Doing race and ethnicity in a digital community: Lexical labels and narratives of belonging in a Nigerian web forum
Dude, Alter: A tale of two vocatives
This paper takes a cross-linguistic look at two notorious examples of contemporary slang: American English dude and German Alter. Both have received considerable attention in the media and some initial sociolinguistic inquiry. It is shown here that both items share a number of properties, some quite obvious, others subtler and possibly less stable. This includes features from all levels of linguistic analysis and covers both formal and functional…
Folk-linguistic landscapes: The visual semiotics of digital enregisterment
This article analyzes folk-linguistic photo blogging as an example of twenty-first-century grassroots prescriptivism. Photo blogs engaged in grassroots prescriptivism usually focus on one specific linguistic phenomenon and collect visual evidence of its usage. Through the overt or covert language policing involved in such displays, folk-linguistic photo blogs contribute to the digital enregisterment of the linguistic practices they focus on as no…
From Naija to Chitown: The New African Diaspora and digital representations of place
The metacommunicative lexicon of Nigerian Pidgin
This paper reports on a specific lexical field of Nigerian Pidgin (NgP), namely its metacommunicative lexicon. Based on a corpus approach, the study identifies a set of lexical items that refer to acts of communication, in particular verbs of speaking and folk-linguistic labels for varieties and registers that pertain to the use of NgP. This study contributes to our understanding of lexical usage in NgP, a field that is less documented than its p…
Narratives of Belonging in the Digital Diaspora: Corpus Approaches to a Cultural Concept
In this study, I examine narratives of belonging through a corpus of digital diasporic discourse. The corpus is based on a Nigerian online discussion forum; its users primarily consist of both local Nigerians and members of the globally dispersed Nigerian diaspora. The study sets out by providing a working definition of narratives of belonging couched in the sociolinguistic tradition of approaching narrative structures. This includes aspects of p…
Hashtagging and functional shift: Adaptation and appropriation of the
The Sociolinguistic Economy of Berlin: Cosmopolitan Perspectives on Language, Diversity and Social Space
This volume explores the linguistic diversity and language variation in Berlin. The analytical focus is on the emergence of linguistic, cultural, political and spatial discourses and communities, or discursive and institutional responses to these. The volume provides new insights into language in its local but transnationally conditioned socio-economic embeddedness.
The sociolinguistics of late modern publics
This issue examines struggles over public discursive power in late modern society, understanding that late modern publics are characterized by a destabilization of formerly unmarked public authorities, in other words, an unsettling of standardized "voices from nowhere" (Gal & Woolard, 2001). The contributions to the issue illustrate traditional social and academic elites' discursive reactions to such developments. In the introduction, we outline …
Handstyle as social meaning: Graphic variation, graffiti and gender
The work presented here contributes to a better understanding of graphic variation and its role in the making of social meaning. Specifically, we report on a case study of female-coded graffiti, and how its graphematic and visual rendering undermines dominant street art norms. In early 2018, the inner city of a small German college town was covered with street art with an overt feminist stance, including tropes such as “riot girls” and topics suc…
First names and sociolinguistic enregisterment: Digital tropes of linguistic mobility
Phonetische Transkription als folklinguistische Zeichen-Praxis im öffentlichen Raum
Diese Studie ist eine erste Erkundung von laienlinguistischer Nutzung phonetischer Transkription im öffentlichen Raum. Dabei handelt es sich um Gebrauchsformen, bei denen das semiotische Repertoire der Transkription – beispielsweise phonetische Symbole und die Klammerung von Lexemen, aber auch Silbentrennung und lexikografische Textstruktur – in der digitalen oder materiellen Öffentlichkeit in einen dekontextualisierten Zusammenhang gebracht w…
Introduction: Unthinking Language from a Posthumanist Perspective
In this special issue, we inspect material and nonhuman phenomena that contribute to interaction and meaning-making—among them sounds, visual signs, animals, images, digital devices, bodies, and movements—in order to stimulate new thinking surrounding the question of what language is from a posthumanist perspective. The contributors are language-oriented scholars who focus on material and technological environments in language. They interrogate h…
Voices in the Linguistic Landscape: Anthropomorphization of artifacts and the pronominal construction of speakerhood
This paper contributes to the emerging analytical framework of anthropomorphized artifacts as part of Linguistic Landscapes. It describes and analyzes cases where signage, objects, or related inanimate objects are inscribed with language that includes first-person pronoun usage and thus constructs the notion of speakerhood. We analyze a corpus of over 80 such items and provide qualitative analysis that includes structural aspects such as emergin…
Mock Pronouns
This article describes mock pronouns as a predominantly digital discursive practice. The rise of gender-inclusive pronoun sharing has been accompanied by antifeminist, queerphobic and transphobic sentiment in line with current anti-emancipatory backlash in public spheres. Based on data from the social media platforms Twitter and TikTok, this article investigates mock pronouns as a specific digital corollary of such antipronominal discourse, harne…
Ideologies of English, ideologies of gender: Enregisterment of internal and external purism in German language ideologies
This paper seeks to explore the structural, systematic and continued enregisterment of ideologies of English and ideologies of Gendern , constructed as socially salient registers associated with characterological figures in German and German-speaking discourse. Linguistic purism is a longstanding, pervasive and well-documented sentiment in the logic of German-speaking language ideology. In most accounts, emphasis is placed on linguistic purism as…
Linguistics (15 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (8 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Digital Communication and Language (7 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (6 works)