Bio

Christiane Hohenstein is Professor of Intercultural Studies and Linguistic Diversity at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW). She specialized in German and Japanese linguistics at University of Hamburg, Germany, where she received both her Master and Doctoral degrees for research on pragmatic contrasts between Japanese and German. Her dissertation on explaining in Japanese and German (Iudicium 2006) dealt with differences in linguistic action patterns and procedures of explaining in German and Japanese data, using the methodology of Functional Pragmatics. She worked and published on research projects both in Germany and Japan. From 1999-2005 she was a researcher at the University of Hamburg collaborative research centre on Multilingualism (SFB 538). She co-edited „Connectivity in Grammar and Discourse“ (John Benjamins 2007) with J. Rehbein and L. Pietsch, and taught at Hamburg University until 2007. In 2007, she took up her current position with ZHAW.

Her research interests center on intercultural communication and multilingual practices in professional and institutional settings, e.g. team work and cooperation in constellations of linguistic diversity, effects of grammatical differences of diverse languages on patterns of interaction, professional genres, and register. Current research projects are tackling aspects of lingua franca discourse in enterprises, pragmatic aspects of Swiss German sign language (DSGS) and SL interpretation, and multilingual health care communication. She is a member of AILA Association International de Linguistique Appliquée and GAL (German Association of Applied Linguistics) as well as IPrA (International Pragmatics Association).

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Check Christiane’s work related to the BFC project in the Publications page