Krebs

At present I am a research fellow in English Linguistics at the University of Würzburg. My research focuses especially on synchronic varieties of English and second language phonetics and phonology by German learners of English.  I teach undergraduate courses on Phonetics and Phonology, and Pragmatics.

I am interested in the fabric of communication, in segmental as well as suprasegmental aspects of speech and the implications made by partners in conversation, be they on the level of sound or speech act. What strategies do speakers have to create sympathy or antipathy with their counterpart, and how are those strategies quantifiable, also with empirical methods? What influence does the speaker have on their speech, and what influence does the outside world have? Having learned the English language mostly through media such as television myself, the answer to the question of language change through (inanimate) outside input is of great interest to me.

Next to my work at the University, I am an avid member in the University’s English Drama Group, where I played several parts throughout the past 10 years, on- as well as off-stage, including leading roles in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’,  Joseph Kesselring’s ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ and Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘Woman in Mind’, to name a few. Off-stage, I have accompanied many productions as a speech and accent coach.

(Forthcoming 2016) Krebs, Matthias: “Sprache der Pornographie, Pornographie der Sprache”. In Schulze, D. and A. Stiebritz (eds.), Kulturen der  Pornografie. Würzburg: UP.

Presentations