Viola Wiegand

@violawiegand

corpus & applied linguistics, TESOL, discourse analysis, surveillance discourses Coordinator MSc TESOL (Online) University of Stirling (@stirtesol.bsky.social) Knitter Personal account

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Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Mar 19

It appears that the promo code from the pre-order may still be working 😇

EXPLORING MEANING IN
SUPVEILLANCE
DISCOURSESCORPORA
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Pre-order now at 35% off:
Exploring Meaning in Surveillance
Discourses through Corpora
Viola Wiegand
This book takes a fresh perspective on surveillance, examining how it is defined, discussed, and negotiated in different domains of public discourse

Use the following discount code to save 35% on bloomsbury.com/9781350501515:
BLOOM-CONF-26

March 2026

Situated at the interface of corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and surveillance studies, this book focuses on how surveillance is defined, discussed, and negotiated in public discourses. It analyses different meaning components of the cultural keyword of surveillance - inherently linked to power relations - in ongoing debates of public discourses.
The author looks at the representation of surveillance in different discourse domains through three different studies - the prime academic joural in surveillance studies (Surveillance & Society), The Times newspaper, and the signage of public spaces. The first two studies illustrate implementations of a novel method of 'co-occurrence comparisons' in diachronic analyses of collocation. The final study integrates cutting-edge research on the multimodal representation of surveillance in public spaces.
Adopting the sociolinguistic framework of 'surveillant landscapes' from mediated discourses analysis, this analysis reveals how surveillant practices are signalled in public environments. To capture the textual and material representation of surveillance in a collection of photographs from public spaces in multiple cities across Europe, North America, and Asia, the study presents a novel methodology combining corpus and qualitative methods for the analysis of multimodal data.

Viola Wiegand is Lecturer in Education (TESOL) at the University of Stirling, UK.

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Nov 28

Our @stirtesol.bsky.social & @leuphana.bsky.social workshop on social justice, intercultural communication and sustainability at the @royalsoced.bsky.social & @ecas-academia.org #Jointforum2025 has just kicked off 😊

Exploring the nexus of social justice, intercultural communication and sustainability:
Perspectives from Lower Saxony and Scotland
Prof. Di: Anne Barron (Leuphana University of Lüneburg) Onur Croek (Leuphana University of Luneburg)
Prof Lizzie Rushton (University of Stiling)
Dr. Viola Wiegand (Unversity of String)
Dr Adnan Yilmaz (University of Stiling)

Workshop 5
Exploring the Nexus of Social Justice, Intercultural Communication,
Sustainability: Perspectives
and
from
Lower Saxony and Scotland
Hosts & Speakers:
Prof. Dr. Lizzie Rushton, Professor of Education, Head of the Education Division,
University of Stirling
Dr. Viola Wiegand, Lecturer in Education
(TESOL), University of Stirling
Dr. Adnan Vilmaz, Lecturer in Education
(TESOL), University of Stirling
Prof. Dr. Anne Barron, Professor of English Linguistics, Leuphana University Lüneburg Onur Ciçek, Ph.D. Researcher, Leuphana
University Lüneburg

WORKSHOP ORGANISATION
A) LIGHTNING TALKS
• Understanding sustainability, Prof Lizzie Rushton (University of Stiring)
• Saying it kindly, saying it well: Teaching pragmatics for sustainability and global citizenship, Onur Cicek & Prof Dr Anne Barron (Leuphana University of Luneburg)
• From words to worlds: Integrating environmental justice into language education,
• Dr Adnan Yilmaz & Dr Viola Wiegand (University of Stirling)
• Follow up Open discussion

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Sep 22

The autumn semester has started for our MSc TESOL programme and I did the first session! How are we suddenly in autumn 😁🍁 #TeamStirling @stirtesol.bsky.social

Photo showing the entrance to the university of Stirling with people going in and an autumnal tree

Slide stating „welcome to Stirling“, showing the loch and the university building

Slide for Viola‘s module TESP001 week 1: „Introduction to principles of (second) language learning and teaching

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Jul 26

Went on a short trip this week to Anstruther in the East Neuk of Fife, Scotland, and finally got to see some puffins on the Isle of May (~8km off the coast)! We didn’t realise they’re already leaving again, so we only saw a handful on the ground but some more flying around and in the water ☺️

A puffin sitting on the ground on the Isle of May and looking to the side so that its beak is visible

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Jul 5

The UAM corpus tool is now available online - so we can save different projects on a server - and it is possible to run frequencies and keywords on entire subcorpora, files, or - and this is interesting - annotated segments! #ISFC50

Keywords screen as part of the Lexis tab in the UAM corpustool

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Jul 5

Conferencing continues - I’m lucky that I am based not far from the #ISFC50 venue - currently attending Mick O‘Donnell‘s pre-congress institute workshop “Using UAM Corpustool for Critical Discourse Analysis” 😊

A laptop in a lecture theatre with the screen showing the menu for adding a new layer in the UAM corpus tool

Screen showing a simple appraisal system for practice in the UAM corpus tool

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Jul 2

The data is actually part of my forthcoming book, ”Exploring Meaning in Surveillance Discourses through Corpora“ - available to pre-order now (with a discount code 😉 😇), and coming out in March 2026 (so stay tuned ☺️) #cl2025 @cl2025.co.uk @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Jul 2

On my way to a quick visit at #CL2025 to talk about a corpus linguistic approach to surveillant landscapes (in the final slot on Thursday at 2.00pm) … on a rather fittingly surveilled train 😁

Photo showing the title slide for the presentation ,„Identifying discourses within multimodal surveillant landscapes through automatic text extraction from urban signage: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis“ by Viola Wiegand, University of Stirling

Screen on an Avanti West Coast train stating „Onboard CCTV
For your safety and security
CCTV images are being recorded on this train.“ alongside a video display from the CCTV camera itself that shows Viola taking a photo of the screen

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· May 21

Just saw I totally slipped into some odd form of pronouncing/thinking in German in one of the English emails I sent just now (am afraid it’s a sign that my brain dealt with way too many emails, messages, and phone calls today 😅) #summerweather #Sommerwetter

Email stating: „Have a lovely evening, too, and enjoy the last few days of the summer wetter“ [German for weather]

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Apr 10

So glad I get to attend Evan Frendo’s #IATEFL2025 talk “Teaching the language of leadership in the business English class”. Great insights into leadership discourse as relational + transactional talk, or navigating a lack of clarity who is in charge in a meeting. Fantastic speaker! www.e4b.de

Outline for Evan Frendo’s IATEFL 2025 “Teaching the language of leadership in the business English class”, with lots of interesting authentic examples of leadership
language and some practical activities

Relational talk e.g. building trust, using humour, offering encouragement
Leader
Transactional talk
e.g. giving directives, resolving problems, clarifying roles

Discursive leadership
*Leadership is a process that emerges in a particular situation®
-... leadership... is contested and emerges through the collective identities of the actors involved*
Walker, R., & Aritz. ). (2014). Leadership talke A discourse approach to leader emergence. Business Expert Press.

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Apr 2

Love that Stirling uni had lots of localised signage related to Scottish culture 😊 (this is at the „Scran“ food outlet on Campus Central)

„The scone of destiny… and other treats“ - sign on the university of Stirling campus that plays a pun on the Stone of Destiny from the small place called Scone, not far from Stirling, near Perth in Scotland

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Mar 21

The final #RC21Symposium session by @nfdykes.bsky.social & @michamahlberg.bsky.social - wrapping up the 3-day event with a case study

RC21
PROJECT SYMPOSIUM
Patterns of narrative fiction in English and German
Nathan Dykes & Michaela Mahlberg
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

A case study: insights from concordances?
• Yesterday - technical FlexiConc
• Python library to support the way we can look at concordance lines o CLiC illustrating how FlexiConc can be implemented
• Wednesday's training day
o we'read' concordances to find out about meanings and functions in textual data
o hands-on - examples to illustrate functionalities of FlexiConc
• Now - a case study:
o what can we find out about body language in English and German when we look at concordance lines?
The RC21 Project: Methods and Tools for Concordance Reading

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Mar 21

I think every research project should aim to „minimise the risk of total failure“ 😊 Marc Kupietz, @idsmannheim.bsky.social #RC21Symposium

IDS

MAIN PROJECT AIMS
• minimize the risk of total failure:
• strategy: focus on features complementary to COSMAS II
• suspicion: a single tool that fulfils all wishes is inpossible
• rather many of them complementing each other
• core-sustainability for >20 years
• realistic extensibility with important features
• always meet the requirements of a scientific tool
Marc kupietz • Scaling Concordancing • RC21 Project Symposium • EAU, Erlangen - 2025-03-21
19 / 85

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Mar 21

Interesting that several #RC21Symposium speakers have suggested starting with qualitative concordance analysis, followed up by quantitative analysis, @anteangaeile.bsky.social and Valentin Werner @jlpopculture.bsky.social from his 2020 article fis.uni-bamberg.de/entities/pub...

Case study II: Telecinematic language by Valentin Werner, University of Bamberg

Concordance lines informing quantitative follow-up analysis:
Standard vs. non-standard (prescriptively sanctioned) variants
gonna (vs. going to); n = 463,294
gotta (vs. got to); n = 90,263
wanna (vs. want to); n = 188,449
oughta (vs. ought to); n = 1,433
lemme (vs. let me); n = 37,377

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Mar 21

If I can find the time, I‘m tempted to feed some of Yukio Tono‘s #RC21Symposium tips on accessible concordancing for L2 learners into my corpora as a resource and DDL sessions on our @stirtesol.bsky.social Technology in Language Education module in the next 2 weeks ☺️

How to help L2 learners with concordance reading
- Use online dictionaries while reading concordances
- Provide easy-to-read concordances
1. Graded readers approach
2. Text filter approach

How to make concordance more accessible
Graded readers approach
- Provide learners with vocabulary-controlled concordances
- How?
- Provide corpora of graded readers, textbooks, retold materials
- Create easy-to-read texts or examples for pedagogical purposes
- Al-generated vocabulary-controlled texts

How to make concordance more accessible
Text filter approach
- Provide learners with concordance lines filtered by different levels of text difficulty
- How?
- Filter the concordance lines: GDEX by Sketch Engine
- Filter the web texts while making web corpora using CEFR-J
resources

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Mar 20

Very exciting to see the @dhssfau.bsky.social updates to CLiC at #RC21Symposium, now incorporating FlexiConc clustering of concordance lines and more, especially having been involved in @michamahlberg.bsky.social‘s team for the prior CLiC 2.0 release myself ☺️ clic-fiction.com

Photo of Alexander Piperski (presenting with Stephanie Evert, out of the frame) on the CLiC and FlexiConc integration, showing an analysis tree to document queries

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Mar 20

@lanthony.bsky.social suggesting ways of using AI to help with concordance query formation.. great ideas! #RC21Symposium

Concordancing with Al Concordance search query formulation
• Standard searches
• Language teaching
- "weather", "reservation", "hobbies"
• "List up the formal equivalents of "and", "so", and "but" in academic writing?"
• Syntax
- "Give me all the inflections of the word 'go'"
- "Give me a list of common phrasal verbs starting with 'go""'
- "Give me a list of common coordinating conjunctions"
• Discourse
- "What phrases can be used to say 'hello'?
- " What phrases can be used to say 'I agree'?

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Mar 20

Another day of concordance fun at #RCSymposium21 in Erlangen. @lanthony.bsky.social starts us off with taking concordances into the AI age

Laurence Antony with the title slide for the presentation „Al-Assisted Concordancing: From Search Support to Pattern Profiling“ at the Reading concordances in the 21st century symposium at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Mar 19

Have been looking forward to hearing all about FlexiConc! #RC21Symposium

Title slide of the presentation „First steps in FlexiConc“ by Nathan Dykes & Alexander Piperski at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Mar 19

And just in time for the talk by @schtepf.bsky.social 😊 #RC21Symposium

Title slide of Professor Stephanie Evert‘s presentation on mathematical and algorithmic foundations of concordance reading

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Mar 19

Made it to #RC21Symposium in sunny Erlangen 😊☀️

Photo of the RC21 project symposium programme at FAU, Erlangen-Nürnberg, and my name tag, Viola Wiegand, University of Stirling

Project poster of the Reading concordances in the 21st century project symposium at FAU in Erlangen, displayed on an entrance door in the sunshine

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Mar 14

At the launch of the Language and Society Scotland network, at Glasgow uni today but bringing together researchers across Scotland. Today’s event focuses on surveillance & securitisation (surveillance discourses being a major research interest of mine I’m very pleased 😊)

Slide from the launch event of the Language and Society Scotland network bringing together (socio)linguists and others interested in everything language and society, today’s event focusing on surveillance & securitisation

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Mar 7

And this time I am also co-presenting at #IATEFL2025, with Vilda Kiaunytė on supporting students in their preparation for writing under exam conditions (focusing on a Lithuanian school context) & a pop-up presentation with Adnan Yilmaz about our @stirtesol.bsky.social programmes ☺️

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Feb 28

🥰😊 one of my favourite Irn Bru memory was spotting this truck within my first three weeks of starting at the University of Stirling ☺️ (haven’t seen it since then but I hope it still comes..)

Irn Bru truck delivering Scottish soft drinks to the University of Stirling campus

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Feb 28

And why isn’t Irn Bru on the list? Definitely a popular choice on @stir.ac.uk campus and elsewhere here in Scotland

An open can of the Scottish soft drink Irn Bru (sugar free version)

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Feb 28

Lovely day on @stir.ac.uk campus; the sunshine is outweighing the clouds, and spring is in the air

Photo of the Loch on the campus of the University of Stirling, showing a swan flipping its wings, and in the background a bridge and hills, as well as clouds in the sky

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Dec 20

I treated myself to Stirling colleague Josh Thorpe’s (@joshthorpe.bsky.social) new book on AI for students (and educators) to read over the holidays - but I may already read it over the weekend, it looks really fun and yet thoughtful!

Cover page of a paper back book by Josh Thorpe titled “AI for students: Creative hacks for academic success - An illustrated guide” with a cartoon version of the author asking “Hey, can we use AI tools to make study more fun and effective?” And a computer answering “OK, I can help with that”

Photo of the blurb on the back of the book: “This book is great! I really like the gentle humour and the illustrations. #hasjust the right tone, structure, and content to help students get to grips with Al as a leaming tool.
-Steve Rolfe, Lecturer, university of stirling
Generative Al has shaken up education, leaving some excited and others uneasy. But fear not! This engaging, comic-style book reveals practical secrets to making Al a fun, healthy, and effective learning tool.
With Al for Students, anyone in school, college, or university can use tech like ChatGPT to improve their academic work - and enjoy it more.
You'll learn to:
• Collaborate with Al chatbots: Gain practical 'prompt-engineering' secrets to work smarter with ChatGPT, Copilot, and similar tools.
• Boost performance: Do better work without cheating or outsourcing your brain.
• Build healthy habits: Blend Al with study, reading, writing, planning, and brainstorming, while increasing your autonomy and critical thinking skills.
• Stay ahead of the curve: Get involved, get confident, and get creative while the tech is still fresh.
This guide is a must for anyone looking to stay competitive while staying calm in today's tech-driven academic world. Perfect for students and educators alike, this book is your ticket to harnessing Al while keeping academic integrity and creativity intact.
Josh Thorpe is a lecturer, writing instructor, and academic advisor.
He has worked with students and teachers from all over the world at University of Toronto, University of Stirling, Glasgow Caledonian University, and Glasgow School of Art. Thorpe is also a writer, artist, and musician living in Glasgow.”

Viola Wiegand@violawiegand· Dec 5

Registration closes today for this free SATEFL webinar by @hayoreinders.bsky.social, taking place this Saturday at 9.00 GMT, followed by the SATEFL AGM