Profile

Anne Wichmann

Professor of Speech and Language and Emeritus Professor

School of Journalism, Media and Communication

Fylde Building 421

+44 (0)1772 893032

awichmann@uclan.ac.uk

Anne Wichmann's research focuses on speech prosody, particularly intonation, and is concerned chiefly with the way in which speech melody constructs, negotiates and maintains spoken discourse. Her monograph Intonation in Text and Discourse (2000) represents a detailed study of the use of speech melody in reading aloud. She has worked mainly on English, but also collaborated with other colleagues in the investigation of German, Dutch and French.

She has a long- standing interest in how emotions and attitudes are expressed by tone of voice, claiming that so-called 'attitudinal intonation' is not inherent in the intonation itself but the result of pragmatic inference in a given context. Her work at the interface between prosody and pragmatics is reflected in a  double Special Issue of the Journal of Pragmatics co-edited with Diane Blakemore, Salford) and in the volume ‘Where Prosody meets Pragamtics’ co-edited with Dagmar Barth-Weingarten and Nicole Dehé. She has given invited plenary lectures in Utrecht, Geneva, Aix-en-Provence, Verona, Geneva, Barcelona.

Her recent work combines the study of contemporary speech patterns and historical change. As words and expressions change their function (known as 'Grammaticalisation'), so the way they are spoken can also change. Studies of the uses of please, sorry, of course all show that new meanings are reflected in the way we speak. Some of this work has been carried out collaboratively with colleagues from Sweden, Belgium and Germany. Professor Wichmann bases her work on large collections ('corpora') of speech, and she is active in the Corpus Linguistics community.

Publications

Publications since 2000

2000 Intonation in Text and Discourse. Pearson Education (Longman)

2000 with J. Nielsen, 'Rights and obligations in German legal contracts: Corpus evidence' in Dodd (ed.), Studies in German Corpus Linguistics, (Birmingham University Press).

2000 'The attitudinal effects of prosody, and how they relate to emotion.' In Cowie, R. Douglas-Cowie, E., Schröder, M. (Eds) Proceedings, ISCA workshop on Speech and Emotion, 2000 ISBN 085-389-772-7

2000 with J. House & T. Rietveld 'Discourse effects on f0 peak alignment in English' in A. Botinis (ed.) Intonation: Analysis, Modelling and Technology Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, NL. October 2000. ISBN 0 7923 6605 0 (hardback) 0 7923 6723 5 (paperback)

2001 'Spoken Parentheticals.' In Aijmer, K. (ed) A Wealth of English: (Festschrift for Göran Kjellmer) Gothenburg University Press

2002 'Looking for attitudes in corpora' In A.Hasselgren (ed) From the Colt's Mouth, and other places: studies in honour of Anna-Brita Stenström. Rodopi: Amsterdam pp 247-260

2002 'Prosodic characteristics of skilled reading: fluency and expressiveness in 8-10- year-old readers' (with R.Cowie, & E. Douglas-Cowie) Language and Speech, 45(1), 1-36

2003 (with R. Cauldwell) 'Wh-Questions and attitude: the effect of context.' In Wilson, A., Rayson, P., McEnery, T. (eds) Corpus Linguistics by the Lune: A Festschrift for Geoffrey Leech. Peter Lang: Frankfurt am Main

2003 'Impoliteness revisited: with special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects' (with J. Culpeper & D. Bousfield) Journal of Pragmatics 35, 1545-1579

2004 'The intonation of please-requests: a corpus-based study.' Journal of Pragmatics 36,9 : 1521-1549

2005 'Please: from courtesy to appeal: the role of intonation in the expression of attitudinal meaning.' English Language and Linguistics 9.2: 229-253

2006  ‘Prosody and discourse: a diachronic approach.’ in Proceedings IDP05 Interface Discours-Prosodie (Discourse-Prosody Interface) 8-9 Sept 2005 Aix-en-Provence, France

2007 “Corpora and spoken discourse” In: Corpus Linguistics 25 Years on Edited by Roberta Facchinetti : Rodopi. Amsterdam/New York, NY 2007. VI, 385 pp. (Language & Computers 62) ISBN: 978-90-420-2195-2

2008  ‘Speech Corpora’ in Lüdeling, A., M. Kytö and T. McEnery (Eds.) Corpus Lingustics: An International Handbook. (Series: Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science). Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin. 187-207

2009 Sorry. Prosodic Evidence for Grammaticalisation in Progress. In Bowen, Rhonwen, Mats Mobärg & Sölve Ohlander, Corpora and Discourse – and Stuff. Papers in Honour of Karin Aijmer. Gothenburg Studies in English 96. Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. 327–337.

2009 Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar, Nicole Dehé & Anne Wichmann (eds.). Where Prosody meets Pragmatics (Studies in Pragmatics 8). Bingley: Emerald

2009 A.Wichmann, N. Dehé and D. Barth Weingarten. Where prosody meets pragmatics: research at the interface. In: Dagmar Barth-Weingarten, Nicole Dehé & Anne Wichmann (eds.), Where Prosody meets Pragmatics (Studies in Pragmatics), pp. 1-20, Bingley: Emerald.

2009  Prosody and Pragmatics. In The Pragmatics Encyclopedia, ed. by Louise Cummings. London & New York: Routledge.

2010 Dehé, Nicole & Anne Wichmann: The multifunctionality of epistemic parentheticals in discourse: prosodic cues to the semantic-pragmatic boundary. Functions of Language 17(1): 1-28.

2010 Dehé, Nicole & Anne Wichmann. Sentence-initial I think (that) and I believe (that): Prosodic evidence for use as main clause, comment clause and discourse marker. Studies in Language 34(1): 36-74.

2010 Wichmann A, Simon-Vandenbergen, A-M Aijmer, K. How prosody reflects semantic change: a synchronic case study of of course. In Subjectification, intersubjectification and grammaticalisation  edited by Hubert Cuyckens, Kristin Davidse and Lieven Vandelanotte.  Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter (series: Topics in English Linguistics).

Selected Reviews

2002 Reviews of Ball M. & Rahilly J. Phonetics: the Science of Speech AND  Carr P. English Phonetics and Phonology  in English Language and Linguistics 6.1

2007  Review of Couper-Kuhlen and Ford (Eds.)2004 Sound Patterns in Interaction. In Language in Society 36,2. 259-314

2007 Review of  'Kubla Khan' — Poetic Structure, Hypnotic Quality and Cognitive Style: a Study in Mental, Vocal and Critical Performance by Reuven Tsur, 2006. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. xi + 252. ISBN: 90 272 2369 6 (hbk) In Language and Literature, 11 2007; vol. 16: pp. 412 - 414.

2010 Review of M. A. K. Halliday & William S. Greaves, Intonation in the grammar of English. London: Equinox, 2008. 224pp. English Language and Linguistics, Volume 14, Issue 01, March 2010, pp 139-145 doi:10.1017/S136067430999044X Published Online by Cambridge University Press 09 Feb 2010

2010  Review of W. Cheng, C. Greaves & M. Warren  A corpus-driven study of discourse intonation. The Hong Kong corpus of Spoken English (Prosodic). Amsterdam, Benjamins 2008. In ICAME Journal 34, 236 242

Conferences

July 2008: With Nicole Dehé. The prosody of initial comment clauses - evidence for main clause or discourse status. 16-19 July 2008, New Reflections on Grammaticalization 4 (NRG 4), Katholike Universiteit Leuven.

Sept 2007: Can English tag questions grammaticalise? IDP07 (Interface discours prosodie) Geneva.

July 2007: (with Nicole Dehé) Epistemic parentheticals in discourse: Prosodic cues to pragmatic function. 8-13 July 2007, 10th International Pragmatics Association Conference, Gothenburg.

May 2007: With Nicole Dehé. The prosody of adverbials and discourse markers: The case of epistemic comment clauses. 23-27 May 2007, ICAME 28, Stratford-upon-Avon.

May 2006: (with Anne-Marie Simon Vandenbergen, Karin Aijmer) Prosody and semantic change:  evidence for the multiple meanings of ‘of course’. ICAME 27 Helsinki.

May 2006: 'Postgraduate perceptions of research training needs'  PRHE conference (2-3 May 2006), Liverpool

July 2005: Sorry in casual conversation: prosodic evidence for grammaticalisation.9th International Pragmatics Association Conference, International Pragmatics Association Riva del Garda, Italy.

Feb 2005: 'Of course: the role of prosody in semantic change.' (with Karin Aijmer, Gothenburg, Anne-Marie Vandenbergen, Ghent) Grammaticalisation conference, Leuven, Belgium.

June 2004: 'The intonation of social rituals.' University of Geneva, Switzerland

Jan. 2004: 'Prosodic variation in the realisation of parenthesis.' University of Aix en Provence, France

July 2003: 'Prosody and attitude: unequal encounters' presented at 8th International Pragmatics Association conference, Toronto (special bi-lingual panel on discourse and prosody)

May 2002: 'Attitudinal intonation: theoretical framework and methodological issues' presented at International Conversation Analysis conference, Copenhagen (Special panel on conversation and prosody)

May 2001: 'Studying attitudinal intonation: can corpora help?' 22nd ICAME (International Corpus Linguistics conference) Louvain-la Neuve, Belgium

April 2001: (with R. Cauldwell) 'Wh- Questions and attitude: the effect of context'  CL2001 (International Corpus Linguistics, Lancaster)

Lectures

Keynote addresses, invited lectures since 2000

Nov 2010: Prosody and Discourse. Invited talk (Keynote speaker), 26 Nov 2010, Session on Prosody and Discourse, GLOBE conference, Warsaw.

Sept 2009 : Prosody and pragmatic effects. Invited talk (keynote speaker) Workshop on Prosody and Meaning. Barcelona.

July 2009: Using speech corpora. Corpus Linguistics Summer School, University of Aston

Apr 2009: Grammaticalisation and prosody.  Invited talk (keynote speaker)  International Conference on Prosody and Iconicity ERIAC research group of the University of Rouen.

Nov 2007: Prosody and Semantic change. Invited lecture, University of Padua
June 2007: French and English discourse intonation. Invited talk (keynote speaker) French teacher training colloquium, University of Geneva.

Sep 2007 The intonation of question tags. Invited talk (keynote speaker) Conference: IDP07 (Interfaces Discours-Prosodie) University of Geneva

Nov 2006: 'Prosody and semantic change' Invited talk (keynote speaker) Utrecht

Oct 2006: 'The ToBI transcription system': invited paper at Intonation workshop, Leeds University

Feb 2006: 'Prosody and grammaticalisation'. Invited paper, Freie Universität, Berlin

Dec 2005: 'Discourse Intonation.' Invited keynote paper at Intonation workshop, University of Cambridge.

Sept 2005: 'Prosody and Discourse' Invited keynote paper at workshop at the University of Provence, with the title "Towards the modelling of the relations between prosody and discourse as a complex interface". Aix-en-Provence.

June 2004: 'Approaches to intonational meaning.' Invited seminar, Ecole Doctorale, University of Geneva, Switzerland

May 2004: 'Spoken Language Corpora' Invited keynote paper at 25th conference of the International Computer Archive of Modern English (ICAME), Verona, Italy.

Apr 2002: 'Attitudinal intonation and the inferential process' Invited keynote paper, Prosody2002, Aix en Provence, France