Dr Virpi Ylänne
Overview
Position:
Lecturer
Email:
Ylanne@cf.ac.uk Telephone: +44(0)29 208 75049
Fax: +44(0)29 208 74242
Extension: 75049
Location: Humanities Building, Colum Drive, Cathays, Cardiff
Research Group
Centre for Language and Communication Research
Postgraduate Supervision
I currently supervise two PhD students, whose projects investigate images of older people in TV advertising in the UK and Taiwan and older workers and their orientations to retirement, respectively.
I am particularly interested in receiving PhD proposals from students interested in carrying out research in any of the below research areas, using qualitative methodologies.
Research Interests
My research interests are in discourse and social interaction, lifespan communication and language, tourism and global communication. My most recent work has concentrated on mediated representations of tourist-host interaction, discourses of tourist identities and also representations of older people in advertising.
Selected Publications
Ylänne, V. (ed.) (in prep.) Representations of Ageing: Image and Identity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jaworski, A., Thurlow, C. and Ylänne,V. (in prep.) Language, Tourism and Globalisation. The Sociolinguistics of Fleeting Relationships. London: Routledge.
Ylänne, V., Williams, A. and Wadleigh, P. M. (in press, 2010) ‘Ageing well? Older people’s health and well being as portrayed in UK magazine advertisements’. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life.
Ylänne, V. and Williams, A. (2009). ‘Positioning age: Focus group discussions about older people in TV advertising’. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 200, 171-187.
Jaworski, A., Ylänne-McEwen, V., Thurlow, C. and Lawson, S. (2003) ‘Social roles and negotiation of status in host-tourist interaction: A view from British television holiday programmes’. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7(2), 135-163.
Jaworski, A., Thurlow, C., Lawson, S. and Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2003) ‘The uses and representations of local languages in tourist destinations: A view from British TV holiday programmes’. Language Awareness 12(1), 5-29. Reprinted in T. A. van Dijk (ed.) (2007) Discourse Studies. Vol. 3. London: Sage, 168-192
Publications
REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES
Ylänne, V., Williams, A. and Wadleigh, P. M. (in press, 2010) ‘Ageing well? Older people’s health and well being as portrayed in UK magazine advertisements’. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life.
Williams, A., Ylänne, V., Wadleigh, P. M. and Chen, C.-H. (in press, 2010). ’Portrayals of older adults in UK magazine advertisements: Relevance of target audience’. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research 35(1), 1-27.
Ylänne, V. and Williams, A. (2009). ‘Positioning age: Focus group discussions about older people in TV advertising’. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 200, 171-187.
Ylänne, V. and John, D. (2008). ‘Roles of Medicines Counter Assistants in advice giving in community pharmacies: A discourse analysis’. Pharmacy World and Science 30, 199-207.
Williams, A., Ylänne, V. and Wadleigh, P. M. (2007). ‘Selling the “elixir of life”: Images of the elderly in an Olivio advertising campaign’. Journal of Aging Studies 21(1), 1-21.
Zhang, Y.B., Harwood, J., Williams, A., Ylänne-McEwen, V., Wadleigh, P. and Thimm, C. (2006). ‘Older adults in advertising: Multi-national perspectives’. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 25(3), 264-282.
Thurlow, C., Jaworski, A. and Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2005). ‘”Half-hearted tokens of transparent love”: Host and tourist perceptions of postcard representations’. Tourism, Culture, Communication 5(1), 93-104.
Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2004). ‘Shifting alignment and negotiating sociality in travel agency discourse’. Discourse Studies 6(4), 517-536.
Jaworski, A., Ylänne-McEwen, V., Thurlow, C. and Lawson, S. (2003). ‘Social roles and negotiation of status in host-tourist interaction: A view from British television holiday programmes’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(2), 135-163.
Jaworski, A., Thurlow, C., Lawson, S. and Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2003). ‘The uses and representations of local languages in tourist destinations: A view from British TV holiday programmes’. Language Awareness 12(1), 5-29. Reprinted as a book chapter in T. A. van Dijk (ed.) (2007). Discourse Studies. Vol. 3. London: Sage, 168-192.
Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2000). ‘Golden times for golden agers: Selling holidays as lifestyle for the over fifties’. Journal of Communication 50(3), 83-99.
Ylänne-McEwen, V. (1999). ‘“Young at heart”: Discourses of age identity in travel agency interaction’. Ageing and Society 19(4),417-440.
Ylänne-McEwen, V. (1993). ‘Complimenting behaviour: a cross-cultural investigation’. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 14(6), 499-508.
Coupland, N. and Ylänne-McEwen, V. (1993). ‘Introduction: Discourse, institutions and the elderly’. Journal of Aging Studies 7(3), 229-235.
EDITED JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUE
Williams, A. and Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2000). Special issue of Journal of Communication Vol. 50(3) ‘Negotiating lifestyle options in later life. Guest editor of this issue.
CHAPTERS IN BOOKS
Jaworski, A., Thurlow, C. and Ylänne, V. (in press, 2010). ‘Transient identities, new mobilities: Holiday postcards’. In A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (in press). Tourism Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jaworski, A., Thurlow, C. and Ylänne, V. (in press, 2010). ‘Language crossing and identity play: Television holiday shows’. In A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (in press). Tourism Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ylänne, V. (2008). ‘Communication Accommodation Theory’. In H. Spencer-Oatey (ed.) Culturally Speaking (2nd ed.). London: Continuum, 164-185.
Coupland, N. and Ylänne, V. (2006). ‘Relational frames in weather talk’. In A.
Jaworski, and N. Coupland (eds.), Discourse Reader (2nd ed.). London: Routledge, 349-361.
Coupland, N. and Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2006). ‘The sociolinguistics of aging’. In U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, K. J. Mattheier, P. Trudgill (eds.) Sociolinguistics - Soziolinguistik. Volume 3. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2334-2340.
Coupland, N. and Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2000). ‘Talk about the weather: Smalltalk, environment talk or leisure talk?’ In J. Coupland (ed.) Smalltalk. London: Longman/Pearson, 163-182.
Ylänne-McEwen, V. and Coupland, N. (2000). ‘Accommodation theory: a conceptual resource for intercultural sociolinguistics’. In H. Spencer-Oatey (ed.) Culturally Speaking. Managing Rapport through Talk across Cultures. London: Cassell Academic/Continuum, 191-214.
ARTICLES IN NEWSLETTERS AND MAGAZINES
Williams, A. and Ylänne, V. (2009). ‘Media representations of older people’. Sociology Review 91(2), November 2009.
Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2002) ‘Sociolinguistics Symposium 14’. Conference report in BAAL News 71, 17-18.
Ylänne-McEwen, V. (1996). ‘Insincere Americans, silent Finns and arrogant Germans: Cross-cultural miscommunication’. In The Bilingual Family Newsletter, 13(1), 1-2.
REVIEWS
Ylänne, V. (2006). Review of de Bot and Makoni (2005) Language and Aging in Multilingual Contexts. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. In Applied Linguistics 27(4), 760-762.
Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2004). Review of Boxer, D. (2002) Applying Sociolinguistics. Domains and Face-to-Face Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. In BAAL News 77, 31-33.
Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2004). Review of Dann, G.M.S. (2002) The Tourist as a Metaphor of the Social World. Wallingford: CAB International. In Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 1(2), 150-152.
Ylänne-McEwen, V. (1997). Review of Nussbaum, J. F. and J. Coupland (1995) Handbook of Communication and Aging Research. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. In Journal of Sociolinguistics 1(2), 302-305.
Biography
Originally from Helsinki, Finland, I have been living, studying and working in the UK since 1983. I gained my BA Humanities (Linguistics) from Hatfield, PGCE in TES/FL and MA in Applied Linguistics from University of Wales, Bangor and PhD from University of Wales, Cardiff.
I was involved in the ‘Language and Tourism as a Global Cultural Industry’ strand of the Centre’s Leverhulme-funded Language and Global Communication project (2001-2006) and am co-authoring a research monograph based on that work. During 2004-2007 I co-directed (with Dr Angie Williams) a three year, ESRC-funded project on ‘Images of Elders in UK Media: Perceptions and Representations’ which focused on print media and TV advertising, using Content Analysis and Discourse Analysis of focus group discussions as methods. I am currently working on further publications from that research project, including journal articles and an edited volume on ‘Age, Image, Identity’. I have also carried out collaborative research on community pharmacy interactions from a Discourse Analytic point of view.
I am particularly interested in receiving PhD proposals from people wanting to do research in any of the above research areas, using qualitative methodologies.
I currently teach Lifespan Communication, Men, Women and Language, Children, Language and Communication and Social Interaction modules on the undergraduate programme. I am Chair of the Part 2 Exam Board and the Extenuating Circumstances Committee for Language and Communication and also act as Research Staff Co-ordinator for ENCAP.
My other recent former roles include Editor of BAAL News (British Association for Applied Linguistics) and member of BAAL Executive Committee. I have also acted as External Examiner in Linguistics for the University of Hertfordshire.