Sofie Decock

Biography

I am Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics at the German Section of the Department for Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University. In 2009, I received my PhD in literature at Ghent University on the mythical spatial and temporal discourses in Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s travel writing. I published several articles in edited volumes and in journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Intercultural Pragmatics, Multilingua, Visual Communication, Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, Germanistische Mitteilungen and Orbis Litterarum. I am currently conducting research on digital business communication, with a focus on complaints, reviews and webcare. From a mixed methods perspective, I analyze 1) the discursive and linguistic patterns in these genres, and I examine 2) how these discursive strategies and linguistic features impact the credibility of the complainer, customer satisfaction, etc. I teach courses on Business Communication, Translation, Community Interpreting and Literature in the bachelor and master, and I am currently supervising 3 PhD students.