Neal R. Norrick

Neal R. Norrick ( born August 13, 1948) is an American linguist and professor at the University of Saarland.

Career

Norrick studied at Lehigh University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before 1978 with his Ph.D. in General Linguistics began his academic career at the University of Regensburg. From 1972 to 1984 he worked at the Universities of Regensburg, Würzburg, Hamburg and Kassel, where he habilitated in 1984 with his work on English proverbs. Norrick was 1985-1997 Professor at Northern Illinois University. In 1994, he was professor of English Linguistics at the Technical University of Braunschweig. Since 1997 he has held the Chair of English Linguistics at the University of Saarland.

Research

In his scientific works, Norrick first examined the system Linguistics in the areas of syntax, semantics and pragmatics of the English language, and later also with other issues such as technical language, poetics and metaphor. Since 1985 he has devoted himself increasingly to the study of structure and dynamics of the spoken language. His focus here mainly on konversationellem humor and everyday life stories. 1993 appeared his monograph Conversational Joking: Humor in Everyday Talk, a study on humor in everyday communication. His investigations for storytelling in conversation led to the book published in 2000 Conversational Narrative: Storytelling in Everyday Talk. Another research interest is the phraseology. So he has in his habilitation thesis How Proverbs Mean: Semantic Studies in English Proverbs busy and is co-editor of the International Handbook published in 2007 the phraseology. In addition, Norrick Co - Editor in Chief of the Journal of Pragmatics and sits on the scientific advisory board of the journals Text & Talk, Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, Discourse Processes, International Review of Pragmatics; Lodz Papers in Pragmatics and Language Journal of Aggression and Conflict.

Saarbrücken Corpus of Spoken English ( SCoSE )

Norrick has compiled a corpus of spoken English in Saarbrücken. This freely accessible data collection consists among other things of transcriptions of everyday conversations and narratives, sociolinguistic interviews, joke communication and teaching sequences. The SCoSE is continuously expanded and used as the basis for a variety of linguistic research.

Writings

As the author:

• How Proverbs Mean: Semantic Studies in English Proberbs. Mouton, Berlin and New York 1985.
• Conversational Joking: Humor in Everyday Talk. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1993.
• Conversational Narrative: Storytelling in Everyday Talk. Benjamins, Amsterdam 2000 ( new edition 2010).

As editor

• With Harald Burger, Dmitrij Dobrovolski, Peter Kühn: Phraseology: An international handbook of contemporary research. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin and New York, 2007.
• With Delia Chiaro: Humor in interaction. Benjamins, Amsterdam 2009 (2nd edition 2011).