Karin M. Eichhoff-Cyrus

Karin M. Eichhoff-Cyrus (born June 22, 1949 in Braunschweig ) is a German linguist with a focus on applied linguistics . She is honorary professor for German linguistics at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg . Together with the linguist Gerd Antos and the lawyer Heiner Lück , she heads the Center for Legal Linguistics .

Karin M. Eichhoff-Cyrus giving a lecture at the People's University of Beijing (2007)

Life

Eichhoff-Cyrus studied German and history at the universities of Hanover , Braunschweig , Heidelberg , Frankfurt am Main and at Harvard University (USA). This was followed by training as a high school teacher (second state examination) in the subjects of German and history. For several years she was a trainer and seminar leader for rhetoric at companies, associations, and adult education centers.

Since 1990 Karin M. Eichhoff-Cyrus has been teaching as a lecturer (Department: German Linguistics ) at the Universities of Frankfurt am Main , Darmstadt , Heidelberg and Halle-Wittenberg . In the winter semester of 1999 she was a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia / USA); In 2001/2002 she took on the position of a professor at the Institute for Linguistics and Literature Studies at the Technical University of Darmstadt for two semesters ; In 2003 she was visiting professor at Tongji University in Shanghai / China.

Eichhoff-Cyrus gained practical experience with language as a presenter, reporter and editor on radio and television. She is co-editor of the series »Thema Deutsch« (Duden).

From 1993 to 2010 she was managing director of the Society for the German Language (GfdS) in Wiesbaden and thus also responsible for the editorial staff of the GfdS at the German Bundestag in Berlin; Among other things, she helped found the German Language Council (2003) and the Center for Legal Linguistics (2008).

She is a member of the selection committee of the German National Academic Foundation and was a founding member of the German Language Council in 2003. In addition, she dealt with the scientific support of the project of the Society for German Language with the Federal Ministry of Justice : “Understandable Laws” (2007–2009) and was co-initiator of the legal language editorial staff at the Federal Ministry of Justice (2009–2012). Together with Gerd Antos and Heiner Lück, she heads the Center for Legal Linguistics at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg .

Focus of work

• Sociolinguistics of German
• Textuality (in particular situationality , action-oriented text research)
• Language typology : text types (especially communication typology , conversation analysis )
• Text production / text reception (especially media language )
• Sociology of language : pragmatic text theory, gender-equitable use of language
• Interaction between language and society in historical situations
• Language variation
• Legal and administrative language
• rhetoric

Fonts

Author

• Attitudes of the judiciary to legal and administrative language. A trend survey. (Together with Thomas Strobel.) In: Der Sprachdienst 5/2009, pp. 133–151.
• Language societies and language clubs. (Together with Peter Schlobinski.) In: Der Deutschunterricht 5/2009: Sprachverfall ?, pp. 63–71.
• Feminist linguistics in German as a foreign language (DaF) class. In: Lochtman, Katja / Müller, Heidy Margit: Sprachlehrforschung, Festschrift for Prof. Dr. Madeline Lutjeharms. Bochum 2009, pp. 126-136.
• Legal language in transition. The linguistic equal treatment of women and men in federal and state legal texts. In: Karin M. Eichhoff-Cyrus and Gerd Antos (eds.): Comprehensibility as Citizenship? Legal and administrative language in public discussion. Mannheim / Leipzig / Vienna / Zurich 2008, pp. 344–360.
• The "sold" woman - sexism in advertising language. In: Karin M. Eichhoff-Cyrus (ed.): Adam, Eva and language. Contributions to gender research. Mannheim / Leipzig / Vienna / Zurich 2004, pp. 102–113.
• Feminism - a socio-political movement is changing the German language. In: Sandro M. Moraldo and Marcello Soffritti (eds.): Deutsch aktuell. Introduction to the tendencies in contemporary German. Rome 2004, pp. 194-201.
• New law: Linguistic equal treatment of the sexes before the law. In: Mutterssprache, Issue 4/2002, pp. 324–336.
• From letter holder to netiquette: text types yesterday and today. In: Karin M. Eichhoff-Cyrus and Rudolf Hoberg (eds.): The German language at the turn of the millennium. Mannheim / Leipzig / Vienna / Zurich 2000, pp. 53–62.
• Shaping laws gender-equitable - but how? Two reports by the Society for the German Language for the Federal Ministry of Justice. (Together with Margot Dietrich.) In: Germanistische Linguistik, Heft 139–140 / 1998, pp. 49–86.
• Linguistic equal treatment of women and men in legal texts. In: Der Sprachdienst 2/1997, pp. 55–68.

Editor

• Karin M. Eichhoff-Cyrus and Gerd Antos (Hgg): Understandability as a civil right? Legal and administrative language in public discussion. Mannheim / Leipzig / Vienna / Zurich 2008.
• Karin M. Eichhoff-Cyrus (Hg): Adam, Eva and the language. Contributions to gender research. Mannheim / Leipzig / Vienna / Zurich 2004.
• Karin M. Eichhoff-Cyrus and Rudolf Hoberg (eds.): Language culture or language decay? The German language before the turn of the millennium. Mannheim / Leipzig / Vienna / Zurich 2000.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See BMJ project description "Understanding Legal Language" ( PDF  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. )