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Susanne Mohr

Trondheim

Forschungsprojekt

(In)visible borders in East Africa – Place- and space-making in a precarious world

As one of the human consequences of globalization, tourism affects people worldwide. It also affects the material and social world around us, the composition of geographical places and social spaces. It is the interconnection of places and spaces under globalization that the joint project seeks to investigate, with a focus on Eastern Africa, i.e., Kenya and Zanzibar. We will examine how tourism creates social spaces, forms part of and is integrated into different places in Kenya and Zanzibar, and how these compare to each other. Particular attention will be paid to changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected vulnerable African societies more than Western societies, where the former have been totally dependent on tourism and never received any form of governmental aid. Methodologically, this will be implemented applying semiotic and linguistic analyses in a critical discourse analytical framework. We will apply our critical vantage point to the investigation of ideologies and relations of (unequal) power in Tiwi, a village in Kenya, and in different villages in Zanzibar. Ultimately, we aim at shedding new light on notions such as globalization and transnationalism, which relate to the world as a cultural concept, made up of not only different but also differently accessible places and spaces.

Susanne Mohr

Vita

Susanne Mohr has been professor of English Sociolinguistics at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway, since 2020. She holds an MA degree in English linguistics & literature and Romance linguistics (Aachen), a PhD in linguistics (Cologne) and a postdoctoral degree in English & general linguistics (Bonn). Her research focuses on multilingualism and multimodality, approached from an applied and sociocultural point of view. Her recent work investigates communicative patterns and the discursive construction of space, often in tourist settings. She has authored articles, monographs and edited volumes on these and other topics, for example in the Journal of African Languages and Linguistics or World Englishes. She has received various grants and awards for her work, for example from the Humboldt foundation or as appointed member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts.

Forschungsschwerpunkt
  • Sociocultural linguistics
  • applied linguistics
  • multilingualism
  • language contact
  • multimodality
  • informal language learning
  • discourse analysis
  • place-making
  • postcolonial studies
  • tourism
Publikationen (Auswahl)

Mohr, Susanne & Lindsay Ferrara (2024). Learning Languages, Being Social. Informal Language Learning in Additional Languages [Anthropological Linguistics Series, vol. 7]. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Mohr, Susanne, Klaus P. Schneider & Jemima A. Anderson (2023). “Communicative Action and Interaction in Africa”. Special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics.

Ackermann-Boström, Constanze & Susanne Mohr (2023). For explorers by explorers: A discursive analysis of a Norwegian cruise tourism website. Scandinavian Studies in Language 14(1): 1-29.

Mohr, Susanne (2022) Nominal Pluralization and Countability in African Varieties of English. [Routledge Studies in World Englishes Series]. Oxon & New York: Routledge.

Mohr, Susanne (2022). Investigating English in multilingual contexts online: Identity construction in geotagged Instagram data. Frontiers in Communication 6: 778050. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2021.778050.

Mohr, Susanne & Anastasia Bauer (2022). Gesture, sign languages and multimodality. In Svenja Völkel & Nico Nassenstein (eds.) Approaches to Language and Culture [Anthropological Linguistics Series, vol. 1]. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 159-196.

Mohr, Susanne (2021). English language learning trajectories among Zanzibaris working in tourism. In Christiane Meierkord & Edgar W. Schneider (eds.) World Englishes at the Grassroots. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 70-90.

Mohr, Susanne (2020). Language choices of South African migrants in the tourism industry of Zanzibar. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 38(1): 60-72.

Mohr, Susanne, Anne-Maria Fehn & Alex De Voogt (2019). Hunting for signs: exploring unspoken networks within the Kalahari Basin. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 40(1): 115-147.

Mohr, Susanne (2014). Mouth Actions in Sign Languages – An Empirical Study of Irish Sign Language. [Sign Languages and Deaf Communities Series, vol. 3]. Boston & Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton & Ishara.

Auerbach Lecture

Exclusive flows? The Discursive and Communicative Construction of Offline and Online Spaces in Zanzibar

Kontakt

Prof. Dr. Susanne Mohr
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Department of Language and Literature
Postbox 8900
7491 Trondheim
Norway

Erich Auerbach Institute for Advanced Studies
Aufenthalt: 01.05.-30.06.2024
E-Mail: susanne.mohr(at)ntnu(dot)no