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Please come prepared with questions and possible solutions to your own question, so we can constructively discuss your matter.

Term papers: Please note that your topic agreement for term papers needs to be signed (the latest) during the last week of classes.

Research

DigiHealthCoMM – Digital Health Communication and Multimodality

2024-2025

Funded by UDE Postdoc Seed Funding

The DigiHealthCoMM pilot project explores how multimodal discursive practices shape digital communities of practice (CoPs) within the context of Tourette's syndrome on YouTube and Reddit. By employing Multimodal Mediated Discourse Analysis (MDA), the project investigates linguistic and multimodal features, user interactions with multimodal prompts (e.g., videos, memes), and the role of multimodal reactions (e.g., react videos) in shaping discourse. The project aims to develop a multimodal annotation scheme, enhance understanding of user engagement, and lay the foundation for broader research into different health contexts across diverse social media platforms.

LUMID Working Group: Linguistic Understanding of Multilingualism in Dementia:

2024 – ongoing

LUMID is an international working group that originated from the 2024 best practice workshop about our common Linguistic Understanding of Multilingualism in Dementia. The intersection of multilingualism and dementia is complex and under-researched – all the more reason for an international exchange among researchers within this developing field! Learn more about us here:
https://lumidworkshop.wordpress.com

Dinner Time Project

The first data collection phase (9/2024) was funded by the American Philosophical Society

The Dinner Time Project aims to investigate communicational patterns and changes over time by analyzing dinner time conversations of real conversation of care couples, that is the person living with dementia and their care partner.  The project addresses the complex challenge posed by the intersection of multilingualism and neurodegenerative diseases, such as dementia, in our aging society. The project will help us to better understand and meet the evolving communication needs of all affected. My goal is to create a longitudinal, multilingual Dinner Time Corpus, which I believe is crucial for achieving this aim. This study highlights the importance of social interaction and person-centered communication in dementia care, monolingual as well as multilingual discourse.

Interested in getting involved? Reach out! dinnertimecommunication@gmail.com

https://wordpress.com/home/thedinnertimeproject.wordpress.com

Learn more while reading:
https://adrccares.substack.com/p/how-casual-mealtime-chats-could-impact

Learn more while listening:
https://informedaging.buzzsprout.com/1833449/episodes/15747810-episode-72-words-matter-language-and-dementia

Learn more while watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi7gnYLtfcM

Intersections in dementia discourse – International, interdisciplinary roundtable

2020 – ongoing

INTERSECTIONS is a quarterly digital roundtable that fosters interdisciplinary dialogue among researchers focusing on dementia. It provides a platform to share findings, discuss overlaps and contradictions, gain new perspectives, and ask interdisciplinary questions, with the goal of enhancing research in the field. Anyone supporting the idea of interdisciplinary dialogue and interested in sharing research findings and developments is welcome to participate. Learn more

Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Carolin Schneider is a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer in the field of pragmatics at the Chair of Prof. Dr. Birte Bös at the Department of Anglophone Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Her research interests include multimodality, digital health communication, social media discourses, digital communities of practice, on- and offline discourses related to dementia, and the intersection of multilingualism and dementia.

Her current project, “DigiHealthCoMM”, funded by UDE Seed Funding, examines how multimodal discursive practices shape digital communities of practice within the context of Tourette’s syndrome.

Within her PhD project, known as the "Bili-AD" project, Carolin delved into the intricate world of bilingual individuals living with dementia. Her research was dedicated to understanding how these bilingual individuals, despite the challenges posed by dementia, tapped into their linguistic abilities in conversations with their primary caregivers. The significance of her work was underscored by the recognition it received, with her thesis achieving the distinction of 'summa cum laude’ and the reception of the Dissertation Award (Sparkassenpreis) in 2023.

Before joining UDE, Carolin was a lecturer in English Linguistics at the Department of Language, Literature and Communication at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She gave courses in the BA English Culture and Language, the Ma Intercultural Communication, MA Multilingualism and Language Acquisition, and MA English Education and further supervised numerous undergraduate and graduate thesis as well as internships.

From 2018-2021 Carolin was part of Prof. Dr. Isabelle Buchstaller's (University Duisburg-Essen) Sociolab team and involved in the interdisciplinary project titled "Memory and Ideology in the Linguistic Landscape." Apart from archival work and ethnographic interviews, she was responsible for the analysis of the news discourses spanning 110 years through the discourse historic approach.

Carolin studied at the University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany), from which she graduated with First State Examinations in English, Spanish and German (Teaching degree for secondary schools) in 2017. She also obtained a certificate in German as Second Language Studies (DaZ, Interkulturelle Pädagogik).

Research Interests

• Multimodality
• (Digital) Health Communication
• Digital Communities of Practice
• On- and offline Alzheimer’s Discourses
• Bilingualism and Code-Switching
• Language and Identity in online and offline contexts
• (Critical) Discourse Analysis

Conferences and Symposia

ORGANIZATION

2025 Panel Organizer (with Irene Cenni), (accepted) Multimodality in Digital Discourse:
Exploring the Pragmatics of Action in Online Spaces, International Pragmatics Conference,
University of Queensland, Australia 22-27 June 2025. (accepted)

2024 Workshop Organizer (with Katrin Karl and Aldona Rzitki), LUMID:
Linguistic Understanding of Multilingual Investigations in Dementia,
University of Bern, Switzerland 19-22 August 2024.

2023 Workshop Organizer (with Michael Wentker and Birte Bös)
“Emotions in Digital Discourses – Textual and Multimodal Perspectives”,
ADDA4, University of Klagenfurt 12-14 October 2023.

2022 Workshop Organizer (with Sonja Kleinke, Birte Bös, and Monika Preyer),                      
“Public Health Communication: Dementia in Social Media Discourse and Digital Interaction”,
Digital Research and Human Sciences – Diversity of methods and materials, University of
Jyväskyla 1-3 December 2022.

2020 Panel Organizer (with Birte Bös),                                                                                 
“Dimensions of Dementia in Digital Discourse”,
2nd International Conference on Internet Pragmatics, University of Helsinki 22-24 October 2020.

CONFERENCE CONTRIBUTIONS (selection; 27 in total)

2025

Schneider, C. & Cenni, I. (2025, June 22-27) Creating Content with Tourette’s – a Multimodal Analysis of Reading Bedtime stories on YouTube. (accepted). [Paper Presentation]. IPrA, Brisbane, Australia.

Qalaj B. & Schneider, C. (2025, June 22-27). (accepted).”Como que me pierdo” – Spanish expressions of perceiving self and expressing memory loss in the context of bilinguals living with dementia. [Paper Presentation]. IPrA, Brisbane, Australia.

Schneider, C. (2025, May 21-23) (accepted) Tics, Talk, and Dough: Metacommunication as Self-Reactions to Tourette’s in YouTube Baking Videos. [Paper Presentation]. ADDA5, Tilburg, the Netherlands.

Schneider, C. (2025, March 21 & 25) (accepted). “Listen, you don’t wish you had Tourette’s“ –  Multimodal Self- and Other Positioning in Health Awareness Influencer Discourse. [Paper Presentation]. BAAL, Health and science communication: Inequalities, inclusion and innovation. Lancaster, UK.

2024 & 2023

Schneider, C. (2024, September 28-30, accepted) Metadiscursive Framing of Death – Negotiating Taboo in a Community of Practice on Reddit, [Paper Presentation] St. Petersburg, USA.

Schneider, C. & Llorente-Belda, N. (2024, June 26-29) Exploring Discourse Markers in Bilingual Dementia Contexts: A corpus-based approach. [Paper Presentation]. PALA, Sheffield, UK.

Schneider, C. (2024, May 30 – June 1). Navigating Bilingual Conversations in Dementia: Exploring the Intersection of Code- Choice, Co-construction, and Repetition Across Two Languages. [Paper Presentation]. InPra, Pisa, Italy.

Schneider, C. & Bös, B. (2024, April 24) “I'm an RN and looked up the medications” – A corpus pragmatic approach to negotiating lay and professional expertise in a digital dementia support group. [Paper Presentation]. Expert and Lay Voices in Health Communication, Jagiellonian, Online.

Llorente-Belda, N. & Schneider, C. (2024, April 9-12) Navigating the Complexities of Self-referentiality and Deictic Expressions in Dementia: Exploring Bilingual Contexts, [Paper Presentation]. CLARe6, Tübingen, Germany.

Bös, B. & Schneider, C. (2023). ‘Staring down the devil‘ – Metaphorical negotiations of emotional experiences in a digital Community of Practice of persons living with dementia. [Paper Presentation]. ADDA4, Klagenfurt, Austria.

Schneider, C. (2023). Contextualized Laughter and Joint Construction of Humor in Dementia Interaction: A Discourse-analytic Case Study. IPra, Brussels, Belgium.

2022 and earlier

INVITED TALKS

Schneider, C. (2024, March 25). English, Spanish, and everything in between: A functional perspective on code-switching in bilingual conversations with Floridians living with dementia, Department of Modern Languages, Tampa, USA.

Schneider, C. & Bös, B. (2023, June 27). Bilingualism and Dementia: The Language Repertoire from a Pragmatic Perspective. Guest lecture. Cologne, Germany.

Schneider, C. (2021, September 17). Ein kritischer Blick auf die mediale Repräsentation der Isolation von Menschen mit Alzheimer während der Coronapandemie 2020 in Florida, Panel: Mediale Altersbilder und -diskurse während der Corona-Pandemie, Gemeinsame Fachtagung der Sektion III & IV der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Gerontologie und Geriatrie, Siegen, Germany.

Schneider, C. (2019, October 14).’Bueno, uhm’ – Interjections as a Code-switching Practice among People living with Alzheimer’s Dementia, Werkgroep over Taal, Brussels, Belgium.

Schneider, C. (2019, June 14). Intentional vs. Involuntary: Code choice related humor in bilingual persons living with Alzheimer’s Dementia. Kolloquium zur Mehrsprachigkeitsforschung, Dortmund, Germany.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Introduction to Linguistics |2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024
• Approaches to Morphology and Syntax | 2020
• Introduction to Pragmatics | 2023
• Academic Speaking | 2021, 2022
• Language Development across the Lifespan | 2022
• Pragmatics in Neurodegenerative Disorders | 2023
• Clinical Pragmatics: How language changes when the brain is changing | 2021
• Beyond Spanglish - Bilingualism in the US | 2020
• Same Same but Different – British and American English Varieties | 2018, 2019            

Graduate

• Intercultural Dementia Discourses | 2024 
• Pragmatics in (online) Health Communication | 2024 
• Intercultural Consultancy | 2021, 2023                                                            
• Language Diagnostics | 2023
• English Culture and Identity | 2021, 2022
• As words fail?! ­­– Linguistic Perspectives on Alzheimer's Dementia | 2020                                                                                         

Guest Lectures

Schneider, C. & Bös, B. (2023, June 27). Bilingualism and Dementia: The Language Repertoire from a Pragmatic Perspective. Guest lecture. Cologne, Germany.

Other

• Distinguished Guest, University of Iowa, International Writers' Program, Summer 2019
• Invited Workshop: Methods in Linguistic Research Colloquium – Introduction to MaxQDA, 2019 & 2020

Awards & Recognitions

2024, UDE Seed Funding

2024, Franklin Research Grant, American Philosphical Society

2023, Wissenschaftspreis der Sparkasse Essen

2020, Best Emerging Scholar Paper on “Ageism in the Pandemic”, North American Network on Aging Studies

Previous Positions

2021-2023 Lecturer in English Linguistics, Utrecht University

2018-2021 Research assistant and part-time lecturer in English Linguistics, University of Duisburg-Essen

2017-2018 Stand-in Teacher at Hans-Sachs Berufskolleg (Vocational College)

2016-2017 Stand-in Teacher at GGS Breitestraße (Elementary School)