FORGErs may be interested in the inaugural meeting of the DisTex research group. Their first speaker will be Matteo Fuoli (Lund University). Details of his paper are below:

Title
Analyzing corporate trust-repair discourse using corpus and experimental techniques

Abstract
Trust is a valuable relational asset for companies, and an important precondition for their legitimacy. But trust is also a fragile commodity; it takes a long time to build, and just moments to destroy. In this talk, I will present the results of two studies that investigate how companies use discourse strategically in order to restore public trust in them after episodes of wrongdoing. In the first study, I combine Appraisal theory (Martin and White, 2005) and manual corpus annotation techniques to examine the trust-repair discourse strategies deployed by BP’s CEO in his letters to shareholders after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. In the second study, I use experimental methods to test the perlocutionary effects of two basic strategies that are commonly used by corporations in situations where trust is at stake: apology and denial. These two studies offer new insights into the discursive dynamics of trust, and demonstrate the usefulness of mixing corpus and experimental methods for the analysis of discourse.

Time & place
1600, Mon 24^th Oct, County South B89

All are welcome to attend.

The FORGE is delighted to announce our first external guest speaker: Holly Anderson. Details of her talk are below:

TITLE
Forensic linguistics in practice

NOTES
This will be of especial interest to those looking to go into a career in forensic linguistics, however please note the following two points:

This talk will involve language and images that some may find disturbing and/or offensive. This talk is not suitable for anyone under the age of sixteen.

Mobile phones and recording technology must be switched off throughout the session. Recording, photographing, or otherwise live-broadcasting (e.g. via Twitter) any part of the talk is strictly forbidden.

TIME & PLACE
1200-1300, Wed 12^th Oct, Cavendish Colloquium

BE AWARE THAT THIS PRESENTATION CONTAINS EXAMPLES OF HIGHLY OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE

The FORGE is pleased to announce our upcoming internal speakers: Prof Jonathan Culpeper (Linguistics & English Language), Prof Paul Iganski (Law), and Dr Abe Sweiry (Law). Details of their talk are below:

TITLE
Linguistic impoliteness and religiously aggravated hate crime in England and Wales

ABSTRACT
Despite its centrality to religiously aggravated hate crime recorded in England and Wales, the nature of the language used has been neglected in research. This paper, based on a unique dataset, aims to rectify this. It takes its approach from the field of linguistic impoliteness, a field that has yet to consider hate crime. Therein lies our second aim: to consider whether impoliteness notions can be usefully extended to the language of hate crime. In our data, we examine, in particular, conventionalized impoliteness formulae, insults, threats, incitement and taboo words. Whilst we reveal some linguistic support for the way religiously aggravated hate crime is framed in the law and discussed in the legal literature, we highlight areas of neglect and potential ambiguity. Regarding impoliteness, we demonstrate its effectiveness as an approach to this data, but we also highlight areas of neglect in that literature too, notably, non-conditional threats and incitement.

TIME & PLACE
1200-1300, Mon 10^th Oct, County South C89

All are welcome to attend.

BE AWARE THAT THIS PRESENTATION CONTAINS EXAMPLES OF HIGHLY OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE