Schulz

Research Interests

Language change, historical (socio)linguistics, sociolinguistics, World Englishes, language attitudes, urban linguistics

Current Research

Place and space in megacities: construction and evaluation of place/space, private and public discourse about global vs local problems/topics in megacities, identity constructions, role of English in multilingual settings

English in Hong Kong: historical development, identity constructions, demonyms, compilation of diachronic corpus, genre developments: newspapers and business letters, variety-specific formulaic language

Development of auxiliary DO in declaratives: diachronic development from 1500 onwards as well as use and function in different varieties of English and in different genres

 

Academic Qualifications

University of Bonn

2008 Master (M.A.) in English Language and Medieval Literature 

2014 PhD in English Linguistics

Teaching

University of Bonn (2008-2014)

Practical Phonetics and Phonology
Introduction to Linguistics
Introduction to Historical Linguistics
History of the English Language
Old English Language and Literature
Middle English Language and Literature
Medieval Studies
Old English Heroic Poetry

University of Würzburg (2015-)

English Phonetics and Phonology
Lexicology
English Syntax
Semantics
Sociolinguistics
Old English
Middle English
Early Modern English
Language Change
Language Policy and Planning
Dialects of Britain and Ireland
Historical Sociolinguistics
English in Asia
Language and Politics in Ireland, Scotland and Wales
The Grammar of World Englishes
Staatsexamensvorbereitungskurs Englische Sprachwissenschaft, synchron
Dialects in the British Isles
A History of English (lecture)
Language Attitudes
Dialects in Literature and Film
Topics in Applied Linguistics
Languages in Ireland
Celtic Englishes
Varieties of English
Standardisation and Language Ideology
Linguistic Typology
Introduction to English Linguistics (Vorlesung)

Publications

Schulz, N., Lehnen, L., & Biewer, C. (2025). “I shall be glad if you will note...” – Studying early 20th-century business correspondence from Hong Kong to assess variety-specific genre developments. In S. Rüdiger,  T. Neumeier,  S. Leuckert, & S. Buschfeld (eds.), World Englishes in the 21st Century. New Perspectives and Challenges to the Dynamic Model. Edinburgh University Press.

Schulz, N. (2021). Auxiliary DO in Asian Englishes. World Englishes 40, 4: pp. 502-518. (Special issue: Discourse markers and World Englishes; https://doi.org/10.1111/weng.12537)

Schulz, N., Biewer, C., & Lehnen, L. (2020). Hongkongites, Hong Kongers, Hong Kong Belongers? Tracing identity (re)constructions in news discourse in Hong Kong from 1903 to 1999. English World-Wide, 41(3), 295–324. (https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.00052.sch)

Biewer, C., Lehnen, L., & Schulz, N. (2020). “The future elected government should fully represent the interests of Hongkong people”. Diachronic change in the use of modalising expressions in Hong Kong English between 1928 and 2018. In P. Hohaus & R. Schulze (Eds.). Re-assessing modelising expressions. Categories, co-text, and context (pp. 311–342). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. Co.

Schulz, N. (2014). Syntactic and pragmatic functions of þa in Old English prose and verse. [Dissertationsschrift] Bonn: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn.

 

Conference talks

“Expanding beyond variety? Challenges of categorising and structurally describing English(es) in geolocated social media data.” [with Lisa Lehnen]. 8th Conference of the International Society for the Linguistics of English (isLE8), Santiago de Compostela, 1-4 September 2025.

“Genre development, comparability and representativeness: Rethinking the structure of diachronic corpora using insights from the compilation of the Diachronic Corpus of Hong Kong English (DC-HKE)” [with Lisa Lehnen, Carina Stick, Aditiya Upadhyaya & Carolin Biewer]. 8th Conference of the International Society for the Linguistics of English (isLE8), Santiago de Compostela, 1-4 September 2025.

“Exploring Local Themes and Global Connectedness in Social Media Discourse from London and Edinburgh” [with Lisa Lehnen]. 26th Conference International Association for World Englishes (IAWE26), Gießen, 25-27 July 2025.

“Integrating corpus linguistics and NLP methods to explore social media discourse from Edinburgh and London” [with Lisa Lehnen].46th Conference of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME46), Vilnius, 17-21 June 2025.

Understanding pragmalinguistic choices in appellative letters – focus on early 20th-century business and extortion letters [with Lisa Lehnen & Theresa Neumaier].46th Conference of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME46), Vilnius, 17-21 June 2025.

Setting the Scene: Language and Urban Space from the Perspective of Geolingual Studies [with Lisa Lehnen]. 25th Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English (BICLCE 10), Alicante. 26-28 September 2024.

“’Having now digested my plum pudding, I must thank you for your letter of 27th December’ – A diachronic study of 20th-century business correspondence from Hong Kong” [with Lisa Lehnen]. 25th Conference International Association for World Englishes (IAWE 25), New York. 15-17 June 2023.

“Assessing the complexity of the city via social media: Twitter discourse in Edinburgh during the COVID-19 lockdowns across different wards”. 25th Conference International Association for World Englishes (IAWE 25), New York. 15-17 June 2023.

“Analysing the prosodic profile of auxiliary DO in affirmative declaratives to trace recent changes in function” [with Christina Domene Moreno]. 9th Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English (BICLCE 9), Ljubljana. 15-17 September 2022.

“Compiling a diachronic corpus to trace variety-specific genre conventions across time: challenges and solutions for automatising text recognition of business correspondence from Hong Kong” [with Lisa Lehen, Carolin Biewer, Christian Reul. 43rd Annual Conference of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME40), Cambridge. 27-30 July 2022.

“’I shall be glad if you will note…’ – Studying early 20th century business correspondence from Hong Kong to assess variety-specific genre developments” [with Lisa Lehnen and Carolin Biewer]. 43rd Annual Conference of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME40), Cambridge. 27-30 July 2022.

 “’I doe wholly concur with you’ – Assessing the social embedding of emphatic and unemphatic DO in affirmative declaratives in Early Modern English.” 21^th International Conference of English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 21), University of Leiden, 7-11 June 2021.

“Language use in the peripheries and centres of megacities: Comparing Hong Kong and Moscow” [with Carolin Biewer, Elena Dieser & Lisa Lehnen]. 8^th Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English (BICLCE 8), University of Bamberg, September 26-28, 2019.

“English in the peripheries and centres of megacities: Exploring the case of Hong Kong” [with Carolin Biewer & Lisa Lehnen]. 24^th Conference of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE 24), University of Limerick, June 20-22, 2019.

“’I did try it… Tried it’ - The Use of Auxiliary DO in Affirmative Declaratives in Asian Englishes.” 24^th Conference of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE 24), University of Limerick, June 20-22, 2019.

“Tracing identity (re)constructions in Hong Kong from 1903 to 1999” [with Carolin Biewer & Lisa Lehnen]. 40^th Annual Conference of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME 40), University of Neuchâtel, June 1-5, 2019.

“The development of periphrastic DO in affirmative declaratives in Early Modern English: A reassessment of its social embedding.” 40^th Annual Conference of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME 40), University of Neuchâtel, June 1-5, 2019.

“Periphrastic do in affirmative declaratives: Diachronic development and present-day variation in World Englishes.” 2. Nachwuchstagung Englische Linguistik (NEL 2), Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Nov 16, 2018

 “The functional development of auxiliary do in affirmative sentences in Early Modern English.” 20^th International Conference of English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 20), University of Edinburgh, 26-31 August 2018.

“Periphrastic do as inherited discourse marker.” 39^th Annual Conference of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME 39), University of Tampere, May 30-June 3, 2018.

“Aspectual Functions of periphrastic do in World Englishes.” ISLE Summer School, Variation in World Englishes: Advanced issues in theory and methodology, University of Regensburg, 4-7 October 2017.

“The functional development of periphrastic do in affirmative sentences in the Early Modern English period – Evidence from the Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (PCEEC).” Forum junge englische Linguistik in Bayern (FJUEL), Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, 22-23 September 2017.

“‘Onwoc þa wiges heard, wang sceawode, fore burggeatum’: Conquest, conversion, and communication in the Old English poem Andreas.” Strangers at the Gate – the (un)welcome movement of people and ideas in the medieval world, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 17-18 June 2017.

“‘Gefeol ða wine swa drunken’ – the stylistic function of þa-clauses in the OE poem Judith”. Approaching the Historical: a symposium of Early Modern and Medieval Stylistics (SEMMS), University of Nottingham, 14 June 2017.

“To Protect from Outside and from Within? - Magic, Identity and the Other in the Old English Lacnunga”. International Medieval Congress 2015 (IMC), University of Leeds, 6-8 July 2015. 

“Grammatical and Pragmatic Triggers for Word Order Patterns in Old English Poetry”. 15th Conference “Studientag zum Englischen Mittelalter” (SEM XVI), Universität Bern, 7-9 March 2013.