Research objectives:

• An application of linguistic perspective to the study of evolutionism and communication related to its presentation and reception. Realized by the Communicating Evolution Section of the Research Group.

• The study of language evolution, contact and change.

Research areas:

• Conceptual metaphors and blends framing the theory of evolution.
• (Im)politeness strategies in evolutionist/non-evolutionists debates.
• Linguistic analysis of propagation and reception of evolutionism.

Methodology:

• Cognitive linguistics: Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Blending Theory, Cognitive Grammar, Construal operations
• Force dynamics
• Corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS)
• Pragmatics: (Im)politeness theory
• Anthropological linguistics
• Ethnography of communication
• Contact linguistics

Research team:

Research coordinator:

• Anna Drogosz, PhD (University of Warmia and Mazury)

Team members:

• Prof. Piotr Chruszczewski (Wrocław University)
• Shala Barczewska, PhD  (Jan Kochanowski University)
• Katarzyna Buczek, PhD (Poznan University of Technology)
• Aleksandra Górska, PhD (independent researcher)
• Aleksandra Knapik, PhD (KNF PAN, O/Wroclaw and Philological School of Higher Education in Wroclaw)
• Marcin Odelski, PhD (KNF PAN, O/Wroclaw)
• Szymon Wach, PhD (Opole University of Technology)

Our team:

Anna Drogosz

Anna Drogosz is an assistant professor at the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland. Her research interests include Cognitive Semantics analysis of scientific discourse, especially of the evolutionary theory and meaning construction in multi-modal communication.  

Piotr P. Chruszczewski

Piotr P. Chruszczewski is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wroclaw, Poland, and Fellow at the International Communicology Institute, Washington, D.C., USA. His publications include:  Językoznawstwo antropologiczne [Anthropological Linguistics] (Wroclaw, 2011); Cultural Patterns in Discursive Practices of Scandinavian Speech Communities in the Viking Age. On the Basis of Runic Inscriptions of North-Central Jutland (Kraków, 2006); The Communicational Grammar of Political Discourse (Berlin, 2002), as well as many papers. He is currently president of the Committee for Philology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Wroclaw Branch, and editor-in-chief of the Academic Journal of Modern Philology, Styles of Communication (with C. Cmeciu, Bucharest, Romania), and co-editor of a new book series Languages in Contact (with J. R. Rickford, Stanford, USA; K. Buczek, Poznan; A. Knapik, Wroclaw; J. Mianowski, Bydgoszcz). At the University of Wrocław he is in charge of the Inter-Faculty Individual Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences. His research interests include, among others: anthropological linguistics (including the evolution of language), contact linguistics, Jewish studies, Scandinavian studies, language acquisition in language contact situations and translation studies.

Shala Barczewska

Dr. Shala Barczewska is currently an assistant professor in the department of History and Culture Studies of the Institute of Foreign Languages at Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce, Poland. Her research interests include cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics, and discourse analysis. Her research aims to bridge the gap between language and culture; specifically, how language is used to construe society and social norms. 

Katarzyna Buczek

Katarzyna Buczek is a lecturer at Poznan University of Technology and Secretary of the Committee for Philology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Wrocław Branch. Her main interests focus on history of North-Sea Germanic languages, especially their phonology and morphology, corpus linguistics, language change, communication and multilingualism.

Aleksandra Górska

Aleksandra Górska is an independent researcher. Her research interests include pragmatics and discourse analysis, (im)politeness theory, language in interaction, computer-mediated discourse.

Marcin R. Odelski

Marcin R. Odelski is engaged in works of the Committee for Philology, Polish Academy Of Sciences, Wrocław Branch and numerous initiatives connected with the revitalization of the Kashubian language. Research interests: Kashubian, mechanisms of language death and revival, functional spheres of language.

Szymon Wach

Szymon Wach is currently a lecturer at Opole University of Technology and Secretary of Committee for Philology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Wrocław Branch, Poland. Research interests: anthropological linguistics, ethnography of communication, contact linguistics, translation studies. Published works focus mainly on the area of contact phenomena, computer mediated communication and humor.

Selected publications (books, papers and book chapters):

• Barczewska, Shala (2017)​ Conceptualizing Evolution Education: A Corpus-Based Analysis of US Press Discourse. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
• Barczewska, Shala (2013). "The 1925 Scopes Trial as a discursive event: Does reference to the 1925 trial affect our view of teachers in the contemporary debate over evolution?" Token: A Journal of English Linguistics 
• Barczewska, Shala (2014). "Headlines of controversy and the role of metonymy and metaphor" In M. Kuźniak, A. Libura, & M. Szawerna (Eds.) From Conceptual Metaphor Theory to Cognitive Ethnolinguistics. Patterns of Imagery in Language. Peter Lang.
• Barczewska, Shala (2014). "A Cognitive Pragmatics Approach to Analysing Press Discourses" Rocznik Bibliologiczno-Prasoznawczy.
• Drogosz, Anna (2008) Ontological metaphors in Darwin's The Origin of Species. [in] S. Puppel i M. Bogusławska-Tafelska New Pathways in Linguistics. Olsztyn, Instytut Neofilologii UWM, pp. 93-120.
• Drogosz, Anna (2009)  Metaphors of family, tree and struggle in Darwin's The Origin of Species [in] S. Puppel i M. Bogusławska-Tafelska New Pathways in Linguistics. Olsztyn, Instytut Neofilologii UWM, pp. 109-140.
• Drogosz, Anna (2010) Metaphors of time and Darwin's Scenario of Evolution Prace Językoznawcze, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warmińsko-Mazurskiego, pp. 77-87.
• Drogosz, Anna (2011) On the inevitability of personification in Darwin's Origin of Species. Linguistics Applied, 4; Bydgoszcz, Uniwersytet Kazimierza Wielkiego, pp.62-70.
• Drogosz, Anna (2012) Darwin's theory of evolution and the explicatory power of conceptual metaphors 2012 [in] A. Kwiatkowska Łódź Studies in Language 26, Text and Minds. Papers in Cognitive Poetics and Rhetoric, Frankfurt am Main,  Peter Lang, pp. 165-171.
• Drogosz, Anna (2012) From objectification to personification.  Darwin's concept of (natural) selection. Acta Neophilologica XIV/1. Olsztyn, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warmińsko-Mazurskiego, pp. 51-60.
• Drogosz, Anna (2012) Conceptual foundations of progress in Darwin's theory of evolution Acta Neophilologica XIV/2. Olsztyn, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warmińsko-Mazurskiego, 121-128
• Drogosz, Anna (2013) Verbal and pictorial metaphors in the theory of evolution Prace Językoznawcze V/1;pp. 21-30
• Drogosz, Anna (2013) EVOLUTIONARY CHANGE IS A JOURNEY: From Darwin to Dawkins Acta Neophilologica XV/2. Olsztyn 2013, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warmińsko-Mazurskiego, s. 19-30.
• Drogosz, Anna (forthcoming) The conceptualization of the gene in Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene
• Drogosz, Anna. (forthcoming) Anthropocentric metaphors in evolutionary biology
• Drogosz, Anna;  Górska, Aleksnadra (forthcoming)  Not to be impolite, but this is war. How the impolite strategy of challenge is utilised and countered in debates between atheists and Christians.
• Drogosz, Anna(forthcoming)  Rola metafor ontologicznych w języku nauki w dziele Karola Darwina "O powstawaniu gatunków".

Selected conference papers and related activity:

• Anna Drogosz: Darwin's theory of evolution and the explicatory power of conceptual metaphors at the international Conference Cognitive Poetics and Rhetoric, 28-30 January 2010, Łódź.
• Anna Drogosz: Darwin's metaphors and their visual representations in contemporary evolutionism at the international conference Materialitat und Medialitat der Sprache. das 47. Linguistische Kolloquium in Olsztyn, 6-8 September 2012.  Anna Drogosz, Aleksandra Górska: Not to be impolite, but this is war. Impoliteness strategies in evolutionists/non-evolutionists debates at the international conference Impolin: Impoliteness and Interaction 23-24 May 2013 Bydgoszcz.
• Anna Drogosz: Anthropocentric metaphors in evolutionism at the international conference   Olsztyn Linguistic Conference, 2-3 September 2013, Olsztyn.
• Anna Drogosz: Evolution works by natural selection. A linguistic perspective on personification in the theory of evolution at the international conference Humans in Evolutionary Perspective 1st Conference of the Polish Society for Human and Evolution Studies 23-25 September 2014 Wrocław.

• Theme panel Evolution's Struggle at ICA Łódź Regional Conference. Expanding Communication: Old Boundaries and New Frontiers. 9-10 April 2015.
  • Anna Drogosz "The metaphor of struggle in communication of the evolutionary theory".
  • Shala Barczewska "Discursive effects of image schemas in press reporting on evolution's 'battle' in the US school system".
  • Aleksandra Górska "'Natural selection' of ideas in the evolutionist/creationist debate"

• Anna Drogosz: Force-dynamic patterns in the theory of evolution at the conference "Cognitive Linguistics in the Year 2015" 24-26 September 2015 in Lublin, Polnad.
• Anna Drogosz: A lecture "Darwin's metaphors. A Cognitive Semantics analysis of the evolutionary theory" 1 December 2015, Wrocław University
• Barczewska, Shala (April 2015). "Establishing and maintaining the 'us' vs. 'them' divide in contemporary American society". 7th Łódź Symposium New Developments in Linguistic Pragmatics (NDLP2015). Department of Pragmatics, University of Łódź. Łódź.
• Barczewska, Shala (July 2014). "Anecdotal Construal in News Articles". 5th UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Lancaster University. Lancaster, UK.
• Barczewska, Shala (September 2014). "Discursive effects of propositional and metaphorical categorization". Cognitive Linguistics in the year 2014. Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa, Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association. Częstochowa.
• Barczewska, Shala (November 2014). "Questions of context, culture, and genre in identifying semantic prosody". 9th International Conference on Practical Applications of Language Corpora. Łódź University. Łódź.
• Barczewska, Shala (February 2013). "Language of war in the debate over the teaching of evolution: Tennessee 2012". Religion in American Life, Kings College. London.
• Barczewska, Shala (June 2013). "The diverse discourse functions of ape and monkey". 12th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference. University of Alberta, International Cognitive Linguistics Association. Edmonton, Canada.
• Barczewska, Shala (September 2013). "The Pragmatic Force of the Blend". Cognitive Linguistics in the Year 2013, Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association. Warsaw.
• Barczewska, Shala (March 2012). "The question of productive communication in disputes among academics". Meaning, Context, and Cognition (MCC). Łódź.
• Barczewska, Shala (2016) "On stage or off, or somewhere in between? Intersubjectivity markers in Dawkins and Lennox in the debate: 'Has Science Buried God?'" Cognitive Linguistics in the Year 2016, Olsztyn, September 23.
• Barczewska, Shala (2016) "Negotiating the identity of science in the arena of public debate." Languages in Contact, Wrocław, May 29.

Interesting links:

International Communicology Institute

Committee for Philology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Wroclaw Branch 

Academic Journal of Modern Philology 

Styles of Communication  

Languages in Contact  

Inter-Faculty Individual Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences