Ruth Wodak#
Short laudatio by Geoffrey Leech#
Ruth Wodak is internationally known as one of the leading scholars in the branch of linguistics known as Discourse Analysis! Discourse Studies. Her published work is remarkable both for its interdisciplinary scope and the breadth of its coverage of subfields in linguistics. She has made a particular contribution to the development of theory and practice in the field of critical discourse analysis (CDA), of which she is one of the world’s two or three most influential proponents. She has put forward a particular theoretical and methodological approach, the Discourse—Historical Approach (DHA), now being applied and taught in many European linguistic departments. More generally her research agenda has embraced the development of theoretical approaches to discourse studies (combining ethnograpliy, argumentation theory, rhetoric and functional systemic linguistics); language and gender; language and/ in organisations; (national and transnational) identity politics; language in politics; and the linguistic manifestations of prejudice and discrimination.
The wealth and variety of her published work makes the selection of ten publications (as listed in the next section of this form) especially difficult. Taken from 8 single—author books/monographs, 26 co-authored books, 54 (co)edited volumes (including special issues of peer—reviewed journals), and numerous articles in internationaljournals, these can only give a limited picture of her research impact and achievement. Wodak publishes in German, English and Fr•ench, with translations into English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, Polish, French, Japanese, and Italian.
Recognition of her distinguished contributions by the academic community is not difficult to find. She was one of the first to receive the prestigious Ludwig Wittgenstein Prize, awarded in Austria to two scientists or scholars from any research discipline annually (similar to the McArthur Prize in the US or Leibniz Prize in Germany). In 2007 she was promoted to Distinguished Professor (defined as ‘world—class’), the only woman so far granted that recognition at Lancaster University, She has won many research grants from national and European (S"` and 6"‘ framework) funding bodies, to undertake research in fields such as text comprehension and comprehensibility, gender studies, institutional communication, language and politics, racism, migration, and identity politics, as well as media studies. She co-edits three academic journals (Journal of Language and Politics, Critical Discourse Studies, and Discourse and Society), and is on the Advisory Board of 23 other journals, including Language and Education, Folia Linguistica, Multilingua, Applied Linguistics, and Language in Society, Perhaps most significant of all is her election in September 2009 as President of the Societas Linguistica Europaea.
Ruth Wodak has successfully supervised over 35 PhD theses in Austria, Germany, UK, and the US. In 1997 she became a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She was chair of the Humanities and Social Sciences Panel for the EURYI Award ofthe European Science Foundation (in 2006 and 2007) and is on the board of various prestigious European research foundations (e.g. Volkswagenstwung). Since 2000, she has been co—directing the Austrian National Focal Point for the European Fundamental Human Rights Agency (previously EUMC), and has been invited as consultant- by the European Commission (1997) and by the Ford Foundation (2004) — to develop anti-discrimination guidelines for media reporting and new research agendas in the areas of discrimination and social exclusion.
In her career as a whole, two particular themes stand out as meriting recognition by the Academia. Firstly, she shows a strong commitment to causes benefitting human society both within and outside the academic sphere: she is truly an applied as well as a theoretical linguist, passionately keen to establish links between linguistics, other social sciences and the human condition. Secondly, she is a true European: few of her contemporaries can match her close familiarity and engagement with the academic community Europe-wide.
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