Dr. Isabelle van der Bom
My research interests include discourse analysis, stylistics (including cognitive poetics), digital fiction, politeness theory and language and gender studies.
Curriculum vitae
I hold a Bachelor’s Degree in liberal arts from University College Roosevelt in the Netherlands and a Master’s Degree (distinction) in Literary Linguistics from the University of Nottingham (UK). I obtained my PhD in English Language and Linguistics in 2015 from the University of Sheffield (UK). My PhD thesis offered a cognitive discursive approach to the study of linguistic identity and focused on how settled Chinese migrants and British-born Chinese people construct their identities linguistically. I analysed interview data using a combination of methods from sociolinguistics and stylistics, with special emphasis on the cognitive discourse framework, Text World Theory. I argued that Text World Theory is well-suited to the analysis of oral discourse because it is able to manage the complexity and multi-layeredness of identity.
Publications
Paterson, L. L., & van der Bom, I. (Eds.), (2025). Special issue on the discourses of poverty. Discourse & Society, 36(3).
Van Der Bom, I., Krone, M.-B., & Troppmann, S. (2025). »C the unseen«. Das Potenzial von Service Learning in zwei
Projektkooperationen zwischen der Philosophischen Fakultät und der Kulturhauptstadt Europas Chemnitz 2025 gGmbH. In T. Laux and U. Bohmann (Eds.) Kulturhauptstadt Chemnitz 2025: Sozialräumliche Erkundungen (pp. 315-336). Transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839472347-016
Paterson, L. L., & van der Bom, I. (2024). Introduction: Special issue on the discourses of poverty. Discourse & Society, 36(3), 345-349. https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265241290531
van der Bom, I., & Pfundt, J. (2021). Student and Teacher Perceptions of Teaching and Learning in Times of Covid. International Journal of TESOL Studies, 3(1), 197-216. https://doi.org/10.46451/ijts.2021.03.06
van der Bom, I., & Paterson, L. L. (2021). Postscript: Reflections on establishing the Journal of Language and Discrimination, Journal of Language and Discrimination, 5(2).
van der Bom, I., Skains, L., Bell, A., & Ensslin, A. (2021). Reading hyperlinks in hypertext Fiction: an empirical approach. In A. Bell, S. Browse, A. Gibbons & D. Peplow (Eds.), Style and response: Minds, media, methods (pp. 123–141). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.36.07van
van der Bom, I., & Paterson, L. L. (2020). Revisiting the welfare state through the decades: Investigating the discursive construction of the welfare state in the Times from 1940 to 2009. In. E. M. Gómez-Jiménez & M. Toolan (Eds.), The discursive construction of economic inequality: CADS approaches to the British media (pp. 49-67). Bloomsbury. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350111318.0012
Bell, A., Ensslin, A., van der Bom, I., & Smith, J. (2019). A reader response method not just for ‘you’. Language and Literature, 28(3), 241-262. http://doi.org/10.1177/0963947019859954
Ensslin, A., Bell, A., Smith, J., van der Bom, I., & Skains, L. (2019). Immersion, digital fiction, and the switchboard metaphor. Participations, 16(1), 320-342. http://www.participations.org/Volume%2016/Issue%201/16.pdf
Bell, A., Ensslin, A., van der Bom, I., & Smith, J. (2018). Immersion in digital fiction. International Journal of Literary Linguistics, 7(1), 1-22. http://doi.org/10.15462/ijll.v7i1.105
van der Bom, I., Paterson, L. L., Peplow, D., & Grainger, K. (2018). “It’s not the fact they claim benefits but their useless, lazy, drug taking lifestyles we despise”: Analysing audience responses to Benefits Street using live tweets. Discourse, Context & Media, 21, 36-45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2017.11.003
Turner, G., Mills, S., van der Bom, I., Coffey-Glover, L. Paterson, L. L., & Jones, L. (2018). Opposition as victimhood in newspaper debates about same-sex marriage, Discourse & Society. 29(2), 180-197. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926517734422
van der Bom, I. (2018) Constructing and deconstructing the 2017 Catalan secession crisis. In J. Schmied & I. van der Bom (Eds.), Working with media texts: Deconstructing and constructing crises in Europe (pp. 165-196). Cuvillier Verlag.
van der Bom, I. (2016) Speaker enactors in oral narrative. In J. Gavins, & E. Lahey (Eds.), World building: Discourse in the mind. (pp. 91–108). Bloomsbury. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474295444.ch-006
van der Bom, I. (2015). Text World Theory and stories of self: A cognitive discursive approach to identity [Doctoral dissertation, University of Sheffield]. White Rose eTheses Online. https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/10110/
van der Bom, I. & Mills, S. (2015) A discursive approach to the analysis of politeness data, Journal of Politeness Research 11(2), 179–206. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2015-0008
van der Bom, I. & Grainger, K. (2015) Journal of Politeness Research: Introduction, Journal of Politeness Research 11(2), 165–78.
van der Bom, I., Coffey-Glover, L. Jones, L., Mills, S., & Paterson, L. (2015) Implicit homophobic argument structure: Equal-marriage discourse in the Moral Maze, Journal of Language and Sexuality 4(1), 102-37. https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.4.1.04mil
Conference presentations and guest lectures
2024
Vielfalt als Stärke: Praxisorientierte Ansätze zur Förderung internationaler Studierender in der deutschen Hochschullandschaft, TURN Conference '24. Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. November 15.
2024
Cultivating a flourishing garden: Exploring learning identity in English for Academic Purposes, Guest lecture English and Digital Linguistics, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. April 23.
2024
Examining multilingual learner identity in HE: insights from English for Academic Purposes, International Association for Intercultural Education Conference '24. Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. March 28.
2023
“It's been a while since a book filled me with unbridled rage”: Narrativity and Embodied Cognition in My Year of Rest and Relaxation, English and Digital Linguistics Conference (EDL4). Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. July 20.
2018
A Cognitive, Empirical Approach to Hyperlinks in Digital Fiction, Annual Conference of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA). University of Birmingham, UK (collaborative project with Alice Bell, Astrid Ensslin & Lyle Skains). July 26.
2017
‘‘#NowWatching the News Series of #BenefitsStreet”: Using a Mixed Methods Approach to Analyse Immediate Audience Response on Twitter’. Corpus Linguistics & Digital Humanities Conference. Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany (collaborative project with Laura Paterson, David Peplow & Karen Grainger). 14 July.
‘Connecting communities through Digital Fiction: “Reciprocal impact”’. LitCom 1: A Conference on Literature and Communities, Connected Communities programme (AHRC, University of East Anglia); Norwich Writers’ Centre, UK (collaborative project with Alice Bell, Astrid Ensslin & Lyle Skains). 3 March.
2016
‘This is the only interpretation that saves you from being a psychopath’. Style and Response: Minds, Media, Methods Conference. Sheffield Hallam University, UK (collaborative project with Alice Bell, Astrid Ensslin & Lyle Skains). 11 November.
2014
‘Exploring the boundaries of self and stylistics in the discourse of a British-Chinese woman’. Annual Conference of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), University of Maribor, Slovenia. July.
Teaching
SS2025
Writing in Professional Contexts (M_AA__4)
Thesis Consultation (M_AA__4)
Practical Skills Consultation (M_AA__2)
WS2024/2025
Reading (B_AA__3)
English for Academic Purposes (M_AA__1)
Practical Skills Consultation (M_AA__3)
Thesis Consultation (M_AA__3)
Project Management (M_AA__3)
SS2024
Multimedia Skills (M_AA__2)
Thesis Consultation (M_AA__4)
Project Management and
Digital Project
Communication (M_AA__4)
WS2023/2024
English for Academic Purposes (M_AA__1)
English for Academic Purposes (M_AA__3)
Multimedia Skills for Conferences, Meetings and Business Presentations (M_AA__3)
Thesis Consultation (M_AA__4)
SS2023
Online Publishing (M_AA__2)
Thesis Consultation (M_AA__4)
WS2022/2023
English for Academic Purposes (M_AA__3)
Multimedia Skills for Conferences, Meetings and Business Presentations (M_AA__3)
SS2022
Online Publishing (M_AA__2)
Thesis Consultation (M_AA__4)
WS2021/2022
English for Academic Purposes (M_AA__3)
Multimedia Skills for Conferences, Meetings and Business Presentations (M_AA__3)
SS2021
Online Publishing (M_AA__2)
Thesis Consultation (M_AA__4)
WS2020/2021 [Elternzeit]
English for Academic Purposes (M_AA__3)
SS 2020 [Elternzeit]
Online Publishing (M_AA__2)
WS 2019/2020 [Elternzeit]
English for Academic Purposes (M_AA__3)
SS 2019 [Elternzeit]
WS 2018/19
Reading (B_AA__4)
English for Academic Purposes (M_AA__3)
Multimedia Skills for Conferences, Meetings and Business Presentations (M_AA__3)
SS 2018
Online Publishing (M_AA__2)
Thesis Consultation (M_AA__4)
SS 2017
Semantics (B_AA__2)
I’ve taught the following courses at the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University and Nottingham University in the past (2011-2016):
- Multicultural & Intercultural Communication;
- Language in Use;
- Discourse & Society;
- Studying English;
- The History of Persuasion;
- Language & Literature;
- Creative Language Awareness;
- Describing Language;
- Introduction to Linguistics;
- Politeness;
- Practical Stylistics;
- Semantics;
- Sociolinguistics;
- Understanding Meaning
- Dutch conversation skills