Skip to content
Skip to navigation menu

Dr Joanna Thornborrow - BA, M.Litt (Strathclyde), PhD (Strathclyde)

Overview

Dr Joanna Thornborrow Position: Reader Email: ThornborrowJ1@cf.ac.uk
Telephone: +44(0)29 208 76041
Fax: +44(0)29 208 74242
Extension: 76041
Location: Humanities Building, Colum Drive, Cathays, Cardiff

Research Group

Centre for Language and Communication Research

Research Interests

Discourse and conversation analysis, media discourse and broadcast talk; children’s institutional interaction, discourse stylistics.

Selected Publications

Thornborrow, J. and Coates, J. (eds), 2005. The Sociolinguistics of Narrative. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Thornborrow, J. 2002. Power Talk: Language and Interaction in Institutional Discourse. London: Longman (Pearson Education).

Thornborrow, J and van Leeuwen (eds), Discourse Studies, 2001, Special Issue: Authenticity in Media Discourse.

Thornborrow, J. 2003. The organisation of primary school children’s on-task and off-task talk in a small group setting. Research on Language and Social Interaction 36 (1), 7-32.

Thornborrow, J. and Morris, D. 2004. Gossip as strategy: the management of talk about others on reality TV show ‘Big Brother’. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8 (2) 246-271.

Thornborrow, J. 2007. Narrative, stance and situated argument in talk show discourse. Journal of Pragmatics. 39/8: 1437-1454.

Publications

Books and Edited Collections

Broadcast Talk. Special Issue of Text 17 (2) 1997. (Guest editor).

Thornborrow, Joanna and Wareing, Shan, (1998). Patterns in Language: An introduction to language and literary style. London: Routledge.

Authenticity in Media Discourse. Special issue of Discourse Studies. 3 (4) 2001 (guest co-editor with Theo van Leeuwen).

Thornborrow, Joanna, (2002). Power Talk: Language and Interaction in Institutional Discourse. London: Longman (Pearson Education).

Thornborrow, Joanna and Coates, Jennifer (eds) (2005). The Sociolinguistics of Narrative. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

Chapters and Journal Articles

Thornborrow, Joanna, (1993). Metaphors of Security: a comparison of post cold war European defence discourse in Britain and France. Discourse and Society 4 (1), 99-119.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (1994). The Woman, the Man and the Filofax: Gender Positions in Advertising. In Mills, S. (ed) Gendering the Reader. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 128-152.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (1995). Women in the Arts and Media. In Coates, J. and B. Madoc Jones (eds), An Introduction to Women's Studies. Oxford: Blackwell, 206-227.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (1997), Playing Power: Gendered Discourse in a Computer Games Magazine. Language and Literature 6 (1), 43-55.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (1997), Having their Say: The Function of Stories in Talk Show Discourse'. Text 17 (2), 241-262.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (1997). Children's Participation in the Discourse of Children's Television. In Hutchby, I. and J. Moran Ellis (eds), Children and Social Competence: Arenas of Action. London: Falmer Press, 134-154.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (1998). Playing Hard to Get: Representation and Metaphor in Car Advertisements. Language and Literature 7 (3), 254-272.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (1999). Language and Social Identity. In Thomas, L and Wareing, S. (eds), Language, Society and Power. London: Routledge, 135-149.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (1999). Language and the Media. In Thomas, L and Wareing, S. (eds), Language, Society and Power. London: Routledge, 50-63.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (2000). Principal, Plausibility and the Historic Present: The Construction of Conflicting Accounts in Public Participation TV. Language in Society, 29 (3), 357-377.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (2001). 'Has this ever happened to you?': Talk Show Narratives as Mediated Performance. In Tolson A. (ed) The Talk Show Phenomenon. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 117-137.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (2001). Questions, control and the organisation of talk in calls to a radio phone-in. Discourse Studies, 3 (1), 119-143.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (2001). Authenticating talk: building public identities in audience participation broadcasting. Discourse Studies, 3 (4), 459-479.

Thornborrow, Joanna and Fitzgerald, Richard, (2002). From problematic object to routine ‘add-on': dealing with emails in radio phone-ins. Discourse Studies 4 (2), 201-223.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (2002). Meta-narratives of Cultural Experience: Race, Class, Gender. Response to Corinne Squire. Narrative Inquiry, 12 (2) 449-455.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (2003). The organisation of primary school children's on-task and off-task talk in a small group setting. Research on Language and Social Interaction 36 (1), 7-32.

Machin, David and Thornborrow, Joanna, (2003). Branding and discourse: the case of Cosmopolitan. Discourse and Society, 14 (4), 453-506.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (2004). Language and the Media. In Thomas, L., Wareing, S., Singh, I, Peccei, J, Thornborrow, J. and Jones, J., Language, Society and Power (2nd Edition). London: Routledge, 55-74.

Thornborrow, Joanna, (2004). Language and Identity. In Thomas, L., Wareing, S., Singh, I, Peccei, J, Thornborrow, J. and Jones, J., Language, Society and Power (2nd Edition). London: Routledge, 157-172.

Jones, Rod and Thornborrow, Joanna, (2004). Floors, talk and the organisation of classroom activities. Language in Society, 33 (3): 233-423.

Thornborrow, Joanna and Morris, Deborah, (2004). Gossip as strategy: the management of talk about others reality TV show ‘Big Brother'. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8 (2), 246-271.

Thornborrow, Joanna and Fitzgerald, Richard, (2004). Storying the News through category, action and reason. The Communication Review 7: 1-8.

Thornborrow, Joanna and Coates, Jennifer (eds) (2005). The Sociolinguistics of Narrative. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Thornborrow, Joanna and Coates, Jennifer (2005). The sociolinguistics of narrative: Identity, performance, culture. In The Sociolinguistics of Narrative. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1-16.

Working papers

Theories of ideology: a sociological perspective of the relationship between ideology and discourse. Strathclyde Working Papers in Language, Literature and Culture. 1 (1) 1988, 1-12.

The semantics of 'deter' - continuing the investigation of "Nukespeak". Strathclyde Working Papers in Language, Literature and Culture, 1 (2)1988, 37-48.

Children's classroom competence: building opinions in discussion talk. (With R. Jones). Roehampton Working Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 2, 2000, 139-171.

Reviews and short notices

Schiffrin, Deborah (1994) Approaches to Discourse, Oxford: Blackwell. In Journal of Linguistics, 31 (1) 1995.

Mills, Sara (1995) Feminist Stylistics, London: Routledge. In Discourse and Society, 7 (4) 1996.

Blum-Kulka, Shoshana (1997). Dinner Talk: Cultural Patterns of Sociability and Socialisation in Family Discourse. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. In Discourse and Society, 9 (4) 1998.

Wodak, Ruth (1997) (ed) Gender and Discourse, London: Sage and Kotthoff, Helga & Wodak, Ruth (1997) (eds) Communicating Gender in Context, Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Language in Society, 29 (2) 2000.

Myths, lies and audiotapes: some thoughts on data transcripts. A response to Kitzinger (Discourse and Society Forum 1998, 9 (1) 'Inaccuracies in quoting from data transcripts: or inaccuracy in quotations from data transcripts.' (with Jen Coates). Discourse & Society 10 (4) 2000.

Sealey, Alison (2000) Childly language: children, language, and the social world. Harlow: Longman. Journal of Sociolinguistics (2001).

In press and forthcoming

Thornborrow, Joanna (in press). Media and Language: Analysis and Methods. In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed). K. Brown (ed).

Thornborrow, Joanna and O'Halloran, Kieran (in press) Poetic Language. In Janet Maybin and Neal Mercer (eds) The Art of English. Open University Press.

Machin, David and Thornborrow, Joanna (forthcoming). The depoliticisation of agency: sex as power in women's magazines. Social Semiotics

Thornborrow, Joanna. Narrative, stance and situated argument in talk show discourse in Kilroy. Journal of Pragmatics, Special issue on Argumentation in TV Talk Shows. K. Aijmer and G. Lauerback, (eds).

Research

My current research is for an EU-funded project on citizenship, identity and governance in European news media, and I am also writing a book on Media Discourse for Continuum.

I am principle investigator for Cardiff University on the IntUne project, and am part of the MediaWorking Group team. Details about the FP6 ‘IntUne’ Project can be found on the central project website.

My work in media discourse has developed as one of the founder members and co-organisers of the Ross Priory Seminar Group on Broadcast Talk. This group, which has been meeting annually at the University of Strathclyde since 1992, is an interdisciplinary and international forum for research into a broad spectrum of mediated interaction.

Biography

I gained my PhD at the University of Strachclyde, Scotland, and before coming to Cardiff in 1999 I worked at the British Institute, Paris, and at Roehampton University, London. I teach Undergraduate modules in mediated communication and in linguistics for literature, and I also contribute to the MA programme.

I contribute to both the Undergraduate and Postgraduate degree schemes at the Centre, teaching ‘Introduction to Media Communication’ to Part One students, and specialist modules in year 2 ‘Media Texts’ and year 3 ‘Teaching Literature through Language’. I also contribute to an MA module on Discourse and Social Interaction. Within the Centre my current administrative roles are Director of Postgraduate Studies, including admissions to PhD programmes, and Chair of the CLCR Research Committee.