This study investigates the experience of students of German when reading German texts for academic purposes. Research into reading in a second or foreign language has focused predominantly on English as a Second or Foreign Language but there have been more studies recently exploring reading in languages other than English. The research community has acknowledged a greater need for studies in this area, particularly with focus on reading in a foreign language for academic purposes. Indeed, there has been a call for thorough qualitative research that responds to the complex activity of reading in a foreign language, which, as has been recognised, is influenced by a multitude of sociocultural factors, factors pertaining to the process of language acquisition, factors that impact the imminent reading situation as well as individual learner factors. This investigation into students' experience of reading German for academic purposes looks at the individual learner experience, with an attempt to take into account various factors that influence the individual student's approach to texts. The goal of the study is to gain a more detailed insight into students' reading processes and to provide suggestions for a teaching approach that guides students towards developing their strategic competence in reading for academic purposes. The study is based on social-constructivist principles (discussed in chapter 3) and incorporates a focused review of research into foreign and second language reading and reading strategies (chapter 2). Students' reading processes were investigated using a multiple stage and method approach to data collection conducted over the course of three academic years at a German Department of a British university. This included a pre- and post-module reading comprehension test and questionnaire, a questionnaire on reading for academic purposes which included a four-tiered reading comprehension test, and a think-aloud study with two student cohorts incorporating both paired and individual think-aloud sessions. The pre-and post-module questionnaire and the think-aloud study were directly related to my teaching of the applied linguistics module Fachsprachen im Alltag aimed at developing students' text analysis skills. In an effort to apply constructivist principles and respond to student feedback. I revised the module to develop a more student-led and cooperative teaching approach. Its impact on student performance was tested in the post-module questionnaire as well as the think-aloud sessions. The questionnaire on reading for academic purposes investigated students' attitudes and motivations towards reading and allowed them to assess the role of the university as well as their own reading abilities. Chapters 4 to 7 discuss the results of the data collection. Chapter 4 looks at students' self-evaluation of reading comprehension skills and strategy use. Chapter 5 investigates the role of the university as well as students' attitudes towards reading for academic purposes. Chapter 6 focuses on self-recorded strategy use based on the four-tiered self-administered reading comprehension test that formed part of the questionnaire study. Chapter 7 discusses the results of the think-aloud study, which allowed insight into students' actual strategy use as could be observed in the think-aloud sessions. Findings reveal that students are capable of evaluating their own performance and have the ability to assess their strategy use, demonstrating meta-cognitive awareness. Students are also cognizant of the apparent gap that exists between studying German at A-Levels and studying German at university, and of the problems that this gap creates for them. Related to this is their expectation that the university is to take on a certain level of responsibility to bridge that gap and for developing students' reading comprehension skills by offering the necessary support. With regards to students' reading comprehension skills and strategy use, this study provides evidence that students understand the purpose of reading academic texts in German as 'reading to learn', i.e., to construct new knowledge and apply a critical approach to working with the text. They tend to apply mainly those types of reading strategies that help them understand the text at word and sentence level but their approach can often be tedious and inefficient. Students seem to lack a sufficiently advanced set of reading strategies that they can apply flexibly and effectively. Results of the reading comprehension tests also provide evidence that students struggle with linguistic features that are typically and frequently used in German texts for academic purposes. Finally, an analysis of the think-aloud protocols allows the conclusion that a teaching approach that promotes students' responsibility for their own learning, both as individuals as well as in collaborative settings, is beneficial to developing students' reading strategy repertoire.

Scottish letters and court-records from the late 16th and early 17th centuries give access to a rich variety of conflicts, ranging from international disputes to everyday spats. This thesis investigates verbal offences reported by correspondents or recorded as legal evidence. Current models of (im)politeness (Culpeper, 2011a, Spencer-Oatey, e.g. 2005), which have rarely been tested on historical data, are synthesized with insights from historical pragmatics. The aims are to create qualitative reconstructions of how participants communicated their period- and situation-specific understandings of verbal offences, and how their expressed perceptions were shaped by private and public dimensions of different contexts. This thesis thus addresses three comparatively understudied aspects of (im)politeness research: historical impoliteness, Scottish (im)politeness, and the examination of private-public aspects of social interactions. Regarding the third point, a multi-dimensional framework is developed for systematic descriptions of private-public dimensions of conflict-situations, remodelling an existing pragmatic approach to news discourse (Landert and Jucker, 2011). Letters are drawn from the Breadalbane Collection, 1548-1583 (Dawson, 2004/2007) and James VI’s correspondence. Court-records are selected from editions of Justice Court papers and Kirk Session minutes. Case studies reveal that the vocabulary and discursive structure of conflict-narratives in letters is largely distinct from reported offences in court-records. Differences are presumably influenced by the genres’ contrasting contextual functions of more private versus more public conflict-settlement. However, the language of conflict-letters and court-records also shows shared moral and religious dimensions. Furthermore, verbal offences in the investigated letters and lawsuits refer primarily to collective identity-aspects of group-membership and social roles, while purely individual qualities appear to have been marginal. The perceived gravity of offence could be intensified by participants’ notions of private and public in multiple ways. Concerning comparisons within genres, the Scottish king’s epistolary language in conflicts shows similarities to that of Scottish upper-rank correspondents; nevertheless, it also has some distinct features reflecting James VI’s understanding of his royal status. Criminal and ecclesiastical court-records had largely different, yet semantically related, inventories of verbal offence terms.

This thesis examines representations of ANGER in Old English by analysing occurrences of eight word families (YRRE, GRAM, BELGAN, WRĀÞ, HĀTHEORT, TORN, WĒAMŌD and WŌD) in prose and poetry. Through inspection of 1800 tokens across c. 400 texts, it determines the understanding of how ANGER vocabulary operates in the Old English lexicon and within the broader socio-cultural context of the period. It also helps refine the interpretations of wide-ranging issues such as authorial preference, translation practices, genre, and interpretation of literary texts. The thesis contributes to diachronic lexical semantics and the history of emotions by developing a replicable methodology that triangulates data from different sources. Chapter 1 introduces the field of study and shows the approaches to emotions as either universal or culturally-determined. It discusses previous analyses of ANGER in Old English and proposes a cross-linguistic, semasiological approach, which minimises ethnocentric bias. Categorisations and conceptualisations are not identical between languages, and Old English divides the emotional spectrum differently from Present-Day English. Chapter 2 presents the methodology, which draws on approaches from historical semantics and corpus linguistics, integrating methods from cognitive linguistics, anthropology and textual studies. Chapters 3 to 10 investigate each of the eight word families, analysing all occurrences in relation to grammatical category, collocations, range of meanings, and referents. Cognates in Germanic and other Indo-European languages, and Middle English and Early Modern English reflexes are examined to trace diachronic development. The thesis determines recurrent patterns of usage, distribution between text types, and socio-cultural significance. Specific passages from Old English from a range of genres are analysed and discussed. Each family is found to have a distinct profile of usage and distribution. Chapter 11 examines ANGER in the Old English translation of Gregory’s Regula pastoralis. This text exhibits usage not found in later prose or in poetry. The Cura pastoralis also presents a different framework for understanding and conceptualising ANGER to the one found in Latin. Finally, Chapter 12 synthesises my findings and considers them comparatively. These word families differ in usage, conceptual links, referents, and even authorial preferences. Most common portrayals of ANGER in Old English involve one of the three themes: ANGER AS VICE, WRATH OF GOD and ANGER AS HOSTILITY. The thesis demonstrates that a detailed analysis of lexical usage is essential for understanding larger conceptual structures within a language, and that this in turn aids the analysis of literary texts and understanding of Anglo-Saxon psychologies.

This dissertation applies corpus linguistics techniques to reveal patterns in the acquisition and use of personal pronouns. Setting out from Brown and Gilman's mould-breaking study of "the pronouns of power and solidarity", it argues that their focus on the metaphorical use of plurality in the second-person cannot account for the numerous ways in which canonical pronoun usage is routinely violated by both children and adults. Nonetheless, the concepts of power and solidarity remain productive ones and can help to account for the patterns revealed here. The first part of the thesis uses data from the CHILDES database to argue that 1st / 2nd person 'reversals' are a common feature of language acquisition which is not unique to children on the autistic spectrum. It also examines pronoun substitutions in the 'caregiver speech' of the mothers and finds a number of differences between the groups studied. The second part uses original purpose-built corpora of English and Dutch party election broadcasts to explore how power and solidarity are constantly re-negotiated in political discourse. The patterns of pronoun use are discussed in their social context, and it is found that amateur as well as professional politicians are adept at exploiting the pragmatic versatility of pronouns.