Verena Platzgummer successfully defended her PhD in sociolinguistics

The Institute for Applied Linguistics congratulates Verena Platzgummer, who completed her PhD at the University of Vienna with honours after a successful online-defense on 2 July 2021.

In her thesis, entitled ‘Positioning the Self: A Subject-Centred Perspective on Adolescents’ Linguistic Repertoires and Language Ideologies in South Tyrol’, Verena drew on language-biographical interviews with 24 adolescents from different secondary schools to investigate how adolescents in South Tyrol positioned themselves to and with their linguistic repertoires and how these positionings were informed by language ideologies. In her analysis, she employed an innovative combination of conversation analysis, interactional analysis and multimodal analysis of bodies in interaction. On 2 July 2021, Verena defended her research, which she carried out within the framework of the project RepertoirePluS, to an examiners’ board via the University platform BigBlueButton. After an engaging academic conversation, the same board, composed of Verena’s supervisors Brigitta Busch and Eva Vetter, the two external reviewers Monika Dannerer and Eva-Maria Thüne and the board head, Kathrin Sartingen, congratulated Verena to the completion of her PhD with honours.