European Center for Linguistics

The European Center for Linguistics ( EZS ) is a cooperation between the Institute for the German Language and the University of Heidelberg .

aims

The EZS was founded in 2010 and aims to combine the linguistic research and teaching activities of the two institutions from a multilingual European perspective. The founding board of directors consisted of Ludwig M. Eichinger , Ekkehard Felder and Jörg Riecke ; the office is in Heidelberg . The EZS tries to examine languages as basic cultural and identity-forming formats. In times of political globalization , it takes into account the aspects of language contact and multilingualism. The focus is on the position of the individual languages - as a scientific language, as a language for communicating European political, cultural, economic, legal and social processes - in the change in the overall network of all individual languages and their functions.

Work areas

The EZS is currently concentrating on the following three research areas:

Lexicology and Lexicography in a European Context
Corpus linguistic interaction and discourse analysis in a European context
Grammar in European and typological comparison.

In addition to its function as a research cooperation, the center provides a sustainable infrastructure for the training and support of young researchers in European language research (e.g. dissertations, habilitation theses). In two summer schools, literary linguistic approaches were focused.

The EZS comprises eight research institutions and researches the languages Bulgarian, German, English, French, Galician, Italian, Japanese, Catalan, Croatian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish and Czech. The EZS works with linguists from Heidelberg University and the Institute for German Language, as well as regularly with external guests from other research institutions.

activities

colloquium

Every semester, the EZS organizes a colloquium for young scientists in which a multilingual look at linguistic issues from various sub-disciplines is sought. It is primarily a platform for exchange between doctoral students of different philologies, but also offers the opportunity for lectures on habilitation theses and other scientific work. In this context, the EZS also organizes excursions, for example to the Institute for the German Language in Mannheim .

Summer school

In cooperation with the German Department of Heidelberg, the EZS advertises summer schools for doctoral candidates, post-doctoral candidates and advanced master’s students with up to 45 places. The summer schools consisted of workshops and lectures by scientists from various disciplines and universities in Germany. These deal with a specific topic overriding the respective summer school; for example, the 2017 summer school was devoted to the topic of “articulating the insecure”. The previous summer schools were supported by the Volkswagen Foundation .

PhD college

The EZS runs the doctoral program “Language Criticism as Social Criticism in European Comparison”, which consists of the interdisciplinary research group “European Language Criticism Online” (ESO) and examines “the evaluation of linguistic phenomena from the perspective of social relevance”. It is directed by Beatrix Busse from the English Department in Heidelberg and Ekkehard Felder from the German Department in Heidelberg.

Linguistic forum

Every semester, linguists from the EZS college and external academic institutions present their current research projects in the EZS forum. It takes place in cooperation with the Society for German Language (GfdS) and is aimed at both professionally trained people and participants who are interested in languages. After the lectures, the research results will be discussed with the audience. The topics of the EZS forum cover all aspects of linguistic manifestations with special consideration of the history of language and contemporary languages. Natural languages in all functional, social, regional and historical variations are thematized from both a system-related and an action-related perspective.

Publications

European Language Criticism Online Manual (HESO)

In December 2017 the EZS project group “European Language Criticism Online” (ESO) published the first volume of the European Language Criticism Online (HESO) manual, which deals with the connection between language standardization and language criticism. The second and third volumes were published in December 2018. In the second edition the authors devote themselves to the connection between standardization and language criticism, in the third edition to the connection between language purism and language criticism. The manual is published in five languages by Heidelberg University Publishing (heiUp).

Book series

Since 2015 the EZS has published the series “Writings of the European Center for Linguistics”, in which the authors devote themselves to current research from a multilingual European perspective. These are examined in the series "from a linguistic systematic and linguistic comparative point of view as well as from cultural and identity-creating aspects". The series focuses on the three areas of lexicology and lexicography in a European context, monolingual and multilingual interaction and discourse analyzes as well as grammar in a European and typological comparison - representative of the EZS's work areas . The series is published by the Winter University Press by the directors of the EZS, Ludwig M. Eichinger , Ekkehard Felder , Henning Lobin and Jörg Riecke .