Marta Andersson

I am a corpus and discourse researcher who is particularly interested in the pragmatics, semantics, and social aspects of computer-mediated communication.

I joined the English Department at Uppsala University in 2023, following faculty positions at Stockholm University, Umeå University, and Södertörn University. My background includes an MA in South African literature from Warsaw University (Poland) and a PhD in English linguistics from Stockholm University. While my primary literary enjoyment these days comes from reading books, my linguistic pursuits are in the area of discourse studies, where I am particularly interested in the complex interaction between pragmatics and semantics. My research focuses on the phenomenon of impoliteness and language aggression in online discourse. In 2020, I received a two-year grant for my post-doctoral research project titled "Impoliteness in Digital Communication: The Pragmatics of Aggressive Verbal Behavior in Online Interactions" and was affiliated with Stockholm University for the duration of the project. Aside from that, my academic interests lie in exploring the cognitive and discursive aspects of subjectivity and how they are realized in various forms of written and spoken English. I employ diverse methodologies and approaches to data, including corpus analysis, statistical analysis, and computational techniques. I strongly advocate for interdisciplinary pursuits and collaborations.

My teaching/course design through the years has primarily focused on subjects related to English language pragmatics, semantics, and syntax. However, I have also taught courses on English for Specific/Academic Purposes (ESP/EAP), specifically writing for degree projects and scientific publications, methodological courses (research methods in linguistics), as well as general linguistics courses such as phonology, morphology, and syntax. Finally, I have actively participated in mentoring and supervising under/graduate and postgraduate students.

Impoliteness

My research on impoliteness involves exploring its presence in the ever-changing landscape of computer-mediated communication and the wide array of creative techniques employed by internet users across different modes of discourse. My objective is to identify how impoliteness is expressed linguistically and nonverbally, employing a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. These endeavours have led me to examine different online contexts and corpora, uncovering their unique characteristics in the process.

Subjectivity

Within the domain of subjectivity, my research has been dedicated to exploring its manifestation in causal relations across different registers of both written and spoken English. Employing a combination of corpus-assisted analysis and experimental methods, I have derived frequentist and probabilistic conclusions concerning the conveyance of subjectivity in discourse. Nevertheless, further inquiries arise concerning the subtle differentiations among various forms of subjectivity expressions and their interpretation by language users. These are questions that I intend to investigate further in the future.

Fields of expertise: pragmatics, semantics, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, research methods in linguistics

PUBLICATIONS

Andersson, M. (forthcoming). English in Poland. In: Bolton, K. (Ed.) The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes.

Andersson M. and Greco, A. (forthcoming). “Oh wow! We getting ready for my funeral?” The prosody of self-deprecation and impoliteness in Jeffree Star’s YouTube product reviews. In: P. Blitvich and A. Georgakopoulou (Eds.) Influencers and fans: The pragmatics of affect and hate in the construction of social media celebrities. Pragmatics and Beyond. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Andersson, M. (2024). Multimodal expression of impoliteness in YouTube reaction videos to transgender activism. Discourse, Context & Media. 58: 100760.

Kuteeva, M. and Andersson, M. (2024/aop). Diversity and standards in writing for publication in the age of AI – between a rock and a hard place. Applied Linguistics.

Andersson, M. (2024). The language of threat: An analysis of Swedish online alternative newspaper reports on BLM protests. Pragmatics and Society.

Andersson, M. (2023). E-mpoliteness – creative impoliteness as a form of social capital on social media. Journal of Politeness Research.

Van Olmen, D., Andersson, M. and Culpeper, J. (2023). Inherent linguistic impoliteness: The case of insultive You+ NP in Dutch, English and Polish. Journal of Pragmatics. 215, 22-40.

Andersson, M. (2022). ‘So many “virologists” in this thread!’ Impoliteness in Facebook discussions of the management of COVID-19 in Sweden. The tension between conformity and distinction. Pragmatics. 32(4), 489-517.

Andersson, M. (2021). The climate of climate change: Impoliteness as a hallmark of homophily in YouTube comment threads on Greta Thunberg’s environmental activism. Journal of Pragmatics. 178, 93-107.

Andersson, M. and Sundberg, R. (2021). Subjectivity (re)visited: A corpus study of forward causal connectives in different domains of spoken and written English. Discourse Processes. 58(3), 260-292.

Andersson, M., Kurfali, M., Östling, R. (2020). A sentiment-annotated dataset of English causal connectives. Proceedings of 14th Linguistic Annotation Workshop (LAW), COLING 2020, Barcelona, Spain (online), pp. 24-33.

Andersson, M. (2019). Subjectivity of English connectives. A corpus and experimental investigation of result forward causality signals in written language. In: I. Recio, I. and O. Loureda (Eds.) Methodological Approaches to Discourse Markers. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Andersson, M. (2016). The Architecture of Result relations. Corpus and empirical approaches to Result coherence relations in English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Stockholm University, Sweden.

Andersson, M., Ozturel, A. and Pareti, S. (2016). Annotating Topic Development in Information Seeking Queries. Proceedings of the 10th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, May 2016, Portorož, Slovenia, pp. 1755-1761​. Open Access

Andersson, M. and Spenader, J. (2014). Result and Purpose relations with and without ‘so’. Lingua, 148, 1-27.

Andersson, M. (2009). ‘I know that women don’t like me!’. Presuppositions in therapeutic discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, (41), 4, 721-737.