About
My name is Lara Portmann and I’m a doctoral candidate in Language and Communication at the University of Bern, Switzerland. I use this blog to summarise sociolinguistic concepts and ideas that I’m coming across during my PhD journey.
My research interests include: language work/ers; critical sociolinguistics; language/semiotic ideologies; digital discourse studies; interface texts; cultural politics of technology; discourse ethnography; social semiotics
The language work of UX writers
My dissertation examines the language work of UX writers. The main goal of this project is to investigate an area of contemporary language expertise, UX writing, that has not been studied before in sociolinguistics or discourse studies. The project examines the “working life of language” by centring practitioners’ own reflexive understanding of their linguistic practices. It is affiliated with the larger SNSF-funded (Swiss National Science Foundation) project “Elite Creativities”, led by Prof. Dr. Crispin Thurlow.
Want to know more? Email me at lara.portmann[at]unibe.ch.
Publications
For copies, send me a quick email!
Portmann, L. (2020). Designing “good taste”: A social semiotic analysis of corporate Instagram practices. In Thurlow, C., Dürscheid, C., & Diémoz, F. (eds.), Visualizing Digital Discourse: Interactional, Institutional and Ideological Perspectives (pp. 203–226). Berlin: De Gruyter.