Irene Elmerot PhD
Contact
Name and title: Irene ElmerotPhD
Mail: irene.elmerot@slav.su.se
ORCID0000-0002-9809-8207 Länk till annan webbplats.
Workplace: Department of Slavic and Baltic Studies Finnish Dutch and German Länk till annan webbplats.
Visiting address Universitetsvägen 10 E, plan 4
Office hours Please contact me via email.
Postal address Institutionen för slaviska och baltiska språk, finska, nederländska och tyska106 91 Stockholm
About me
I passed my doctoral defense on 14 June 2024. The Swedish system does not give grades to doctoral defenses, only pass or fail, but please contact me for references if needed. The Introductory chapter of my thesis is available under Publications, but if you want to read the whole thesis, please send me an email.
Research and other work
In my research I focus on corpus linguistics and discourse analysis of linguistic power structures, especially linguistic othering. With the help of corpus linguistic methods and some statistics, I assemble data on which discourse analytical theories can be applied.
Currently, I am working on two projects. In the first, I am updating the web application MultiLingProfiler with Czech input, to create a possibility for Czech teachers to validate their texts before giving them to students in class.
Another project regards political discourses about migration in different countries, where I focus on the Czech parliamentary discourse after 2015. I am also employed at the national infra structure Språkbanken Text on a third project.
In 2026, I will give a talk on language tools at the conference for The Swedish Association of Professional Translators and Authorised Interpreters. In 2025, I held a workshop for doctoral students as part of a course on Discourse Analytical theories and methods, and previously I have held talks for the general public at the international non-fiction translator conference BP as well as at the City Library of Gothenburg. On occasion, I have reviewed non-fiction books at the well-established book blog Dagensbok.com (in Swedish only).
From 2018 to the summer of 2024, I was a Ph.D. student within the Language and Power Doctoral School in the Humanities, and the research network of the same name. The material I studied comes mainly from the very large text data bases in the Czech National Corpus.
During my doctoral studies, I was a Ph.D. representative and the Chief website co-ordinator in the Swedish Association for Slavists 2022–2024; the student representative in the Centre for Studies in Indo-European Language and Culture 2021–2024, the Department's Representative in Environmental Questions 2022–2024, and from June 2020 to June 2021 I was Chair of the Faculty Council at the Faculty of Humanities.
Previously, I got an M.A. in Latin, and then I worked as a full-time non-fiction translator, proofreader and text editor, and took an active part in the Swedish Association of Professional translators. Social media: Mastodon.
Doctoral level
Autumn 2025: Two films recorded and a workshop held as part of the doctoral course Introduction to linguistic discourse analysis. My contribution consisted of an introduction to Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) and another to Keyword Analysis for CADS research.
Supervisor
Spring 2025: Main supervisor for five bachelor theses at the Institute for Interpreting and Translation Studies. Three passed on time, one passed the following semester. One is still to be submitted.
Teacher (in Swedish)
Autumn 2023: (Part of) “Academic writing”, about the subject in general and specifically about quantitative methods in (Czech) linguistics. Course shared with Tora Hedin, Czech III (Stockholm University) – online.
Autumn 2019, Spring 2020, Autumn 2020, Autumn 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024: “Czechoslovakia between two wars” and “Czech culture and literature – a history of satire”, Czechia: New nation, ancient history (Stockholm University) – online.
Spring 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2023: “Understanding text and its grammar", Czech 1 (Stockholm University).
Autumn 2018: “Czech culture and literature – an introduction”, Czechia: New nation, ancient history (Stockholm University).
Autumn 2018: “Some quantitative corpus linguistic methods”, Language and Power (Sociolinguistics, University of Gothenburg).
Course administrator
Autumn 2018, Autumn 2019, Spring 2020, Autumn 2020, Autumn 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024: Czechia: New nation, ancient history – online.
In 2025, I have been engaged in two research projects. The first project focuses on the utilisation of water metaphors in parliamentary discourse for displaced populations. The second project involves the creation of a corpus, which will subsequently be analysed to examine how former slaves in North America described their lives before, during, and after the abolition of slavery. The latter has got funding from the Swedish Research Council, and I am employed at Språkbanken Text from January 2026.
The Doctoral school Language and power has now turned into a network. Please read more here: https://www.su.se/english/research/research-groups/network-language-and-power
You will find my published research under "Publications" on this page.
During my Ph.D. education, I was also on part-time leave to assist as a corpus linguistics expert for the project Text analysis of transcripts of the tv programmes Události Czech Television and Události and comments (“Textová analyza přepišů pořadů Události ČT a Události a komentáře”) 2022–2024. (Website here.) Primary investigators: Andrea Culková and Irena Reifová, Department of Media Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences), Charles University, Prague.
Invited presentations
“Power in powerful discourses – constructing immigration in European parliaments”, Research seminar, Department of Languages and Literatures, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, 22.01.2025.
“Publicera stort, litet och mitt i prick” (plenary talk), Conference for Master and Bachelor Students of Slavonic Languages 2024, Umeå University, 12.11.2024.
“Korpus-stödd diskursanalys av sociala aktörer – möjligheter och begränsningar”, Språkbrukskollokviet, Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism, Stockholm University, 9.10.2024.
“Language and Power in Czech News 1990–2018 and 2012–2022”, Institute of Czech Literature at the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia, 14.02.2024. Seminar as part of my Josef Dobrovský Fellowship.
“Migrational collocations in alternative and mainstream press 2015 vs 2022” at Workshop del GEDIT, dins del marc del projecte Fantame, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, 15.11.2023.
“Climate change reporting over a decade – presence and absence of terms, persons and institutions” with Andrea Culková, Higher Seminar, Department for Applied Information Technology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, 10.10.2023.
Conference participation (Slavic studies, corpus linguistics or discourse analysis)
”Othering and stratification in a diachronic news corpus”, XVIIe Congrès International des Slavistes, Sorbonne, Paris, 25–30 augusti 2025.
”Voices of the enslaved: corpus-based discourse analysis of historical slave narratives” med Leif-Jöran Olsson, Språkbanken Text och Klas Rönnbäck, Göteborgs universitet, Thirteenth International Corpus Linguistics Conference, University of Birmingham/Aston University/Birmingham City University, 30 juni–3 juli 2025.
“Discursive representations of nationalities in Czech news media”, Biennial of Czech Linguistics, Charles University, Prague, 17–20 September 2024.
“Migration and metaphors of water: a contrastive corpus-assisted study” with Mario Bisiada, Dario Del Fante & Charlotte Taylor at Corpora and Discourse International Conference 2024, University of Innsbruck, 17–19 July 2024.
“Silencing climate: a study on televised climate reporting” (poster) with Andrea Culková & Irena Reifová at Corpora and Discourse International Conference 2024, University of Innsbruck, 17–19 July 2024.
“Water metaphors in Austrian, Czech, Italian, UK political discourse” with Mario Bisiada, Dario Del Fante and Charlotte Taylor at Waterphors 2024, organized by the Linguistics Research Center – Corpora, Discourses & Societies at the University of Lyon (Jean Moulin Lyon 3), 4-5 April 2024.
“Corpus-based understanding of foreign language texts for speakers of Swedish” at the Teachers’ conference 2024 – Meaningful teaching in our times, Stockholm University, 14 March 2024.
“Behind the curtains of sentiment analysis: A three-piece intersectional analysis of Czech news press reveals the good and bad of semi-automated research.” at the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies Convention, Philadelphia, 2 December 2023.
“Professional nouns in a positive light: How are internationally standardized groups reflected in news media?” at The Twelfth International Corpus Linguistics Conference (CL2023), Lancaster, UK, 3–6 July 2023.
”What does time tell about women? A longitudinal study of adjectives modifying female nouns and their male counterparts”, Corpora and Discourse International Conference, Universitá di Bologna, 26–28 August 2022.
“Subjectivity on gender in the Czech Republic – results of a longitudinal news media study”, 22nd Nordic Meeting of Slavists, Oslo, Norway, 10–13 August 2022.
“Income, Nationality and Subjectivity in Media Text – Czech newspapers from 1990 to 2018”, Slovko 2021, Bratislava, Slovakia, 13–15 October 2021.
“Why nationality matters – Ingroups and outgroups in Czech news after 1989” (updated version), The 11th International Corpus Linguistics Conference (CL2021), Limerick, Ireland (online conference) 13–17 July 2021.
“Why nationality matters – Ingroups and outgroups in Czech news after 1989”, SlaviCorp 2020, a part of The 8th International Conference Grammar & Corpora, Kraków, Poland (online conference) 25–27 November 2020.
“A Muslim odyssey – subjectivity in news articles on Arabs and Muslims” (poster), Stance, (Inter)Subjectivity, Identity in Discourse 2020, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (online), 9–11 September 2020.
“Linguistic othering of Arabs and Muslims through adjectival modifiers in the press”, Corpora and Discourse International Conference, University of Sussex (online), 17–19 June 2020.
“Reporting verbs about women and men in Czech printed media 1989 – 2015”, Slovko 2019, Bratislava, Slovakia, 23–25 October 2019.
”Language and power in Czech printed media”, The 21st Conference of Scandinavian Slavists, Joensuu, Finland, 14–18 August 2019.
”Linguistic othering in Czech media: adjectives – a work in progress” (poster) and
”Omnia divisa est in partes tres – how news production in the Czech Republic amplified othering”, The 10th International Corpus Linguistics Conference (CL2019), Cardiff University, Wales, 22–26 July 2019.
”Hidden power structures in Czech printed media", Linguistics Prague, Czech Republic, 2019.
"Language and power in Czech media – a corpus analysis of linguistic othering". CADAAD 2018, Aalborg, Denmark, 2018.
"Language and power in Czech corpora”. Europhras – Student Research Workshop in conjunction with Computational and Corpus-based Phraseology, London, UK, 2017.
“Quantitative discourse analysis using the Czech National Corpus”. Quantitative Tools for Qualitative Analysis: Computational Social Science meets Discourse Analysis, A workshop at the European Symposium Series on Societal Challenges in Computational Social Science London, UK, 2017.
Other conferences
“Corpus-based understanding of foreign language texts for speakers of Swedish” at the Teachers' conference 2024 – Meningsfullt lärande i tiden, Stockholm University, 14 March 2024.
“The translation of Czech particles in three registers: a corpus-based analysis”, Translation in Transition 6, Charles University, Prague, 22–23 September 2022.
“Språk och makt i tjeckiska media – ett pågående avhandlingsarbete” (poster), Ämneskonferens i slaviska språk, University of Gothenburg, 25–26 November 2021.
”Språklig andrafiering i tjeckiska medier: Adjektiv och deras substantiv – en studie i vardande”, Forum för Textforskning 14, Uppsala university, 10–11 June 2019.
”Romani – a language for education only? Using corpus linguistics tools to analyze attitudes toward a minority language”, Symposium on Ideologies, Attitudes, and Power in Language Contact Settings, Stockholms universitet, 16–17 May 2019.
“Linguistic othering in different forms – a case from Czech News Media", Future of the Languages, Stockholm 2019.