Prof. Elda Weizman
Elda Weizman, Head of the Unit for Interdisciplinary Studies, is professor emerita at Bar Ilan University, Israel, where she teaches cross-cultural pragmatics and the theory of translation at the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies. Her research interests, anchored in socio-pragmatics, focus on the interpretation of indirectness in written and oral discourse, with special emphasis on irony and challenge in a cross-cultural perspective (English, French and Hebrew) in the written and electronic media. Her book, Positioning in Media Dialogue (John Benjamins, 2008), explores dialogicity in political news interviews, based on a research supported by the Israel Academy of Sciences. Prof. Weizman (co-) edited special issues and publishes in English, French and Hebrew, e.g. in Journal of Pragmatics, Language Sciences, Argumentation et Analyse du Discours, Questions de Communication, Balshanut Ivrit (Hebrew Linguistics) and Safa vexevra (Language and Society). She has recently co-edited (with Prof. Anita Fetzer) two volumes on the pragmatics of follow-ups with John Benjamins (publushes 2015) . She further conducted, with Prof. Lea Kozminsky, a research on the pragmatics of requests in self advocacy by students with learning disabilities, anchored in her previous work on indirect requests, and supported by the Israel Academy of Sciences.
Prof. Weizman is currently conducting a comparative corpus-based research on irony in on-line commenting and op-eds in the internet sites of the Washington Post, NRG and Le Figaro. Additionally, she conducts with her colleague, Prof. Anita Fetzer, a large-scale research project on the construction of ordinariness, for which they have recently received from the German-Israel Foundation (GIF) a 3-year grant on “The construction of ordinariness in mediated public talk: Accountability of communicative action and the private-public interface”. Elda Weizman, Head of the Unit for Interdisciplinary Studies, is Professor Emerita at Bar Ilan University, where she teaches cross-cultural pragmatics and the theory of translation at the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies. Her research interests, anchored in socio-pragmatics, focus on the interpretation of indirectness in written and oral discourse in a cross-cultural perspective (English, French and Hebrew) in the written and electronic media. These include her book, Positioning in Media Dialogue (John Benjamins, 2008), which explores dialogicity in political news interviews, two co-edited volumes (2015, with Prof. Anita Fetzer) on the pragmatics of follow-ups with John Benjamins, and several (co-) edited special issues in English, French and Hebrew, e.g. in Journal of Pragmatics, Language Sciences, Argumentation et Analyse du Discours, Questions de Communication, Balshanut Ivrit (Hebrew Linguistics) and Safa vexevra (Israel Studies in Language and Society) . She further conducted, with Prof. Lea Kozminsky, a research on the pragmatics of requests in self advocacy by students with learning disabilities, anchored in her previous work on indirect requests.
CV
Education
B.A. 1969-1972 . English language, French culture, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
M.A. 1972-1974. French Linguistics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Diploma. 1972-1974. French-Hebrew Translation. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ph.D. 1976- 1982. Discourse Characteristics of Journalistic Language in French and Hebrew, and Implications for Translation: Utterances in Quotation Marks (in Hebrew). Advisors: Profs. C. Rabin, S.Blum-Kulka.
Professional positions
Head, Bar-Ilan Unit of Interdisciplinary Studies;
President of the Israel Association of Applied Linguistics;
Associate editor, Topics in Humor Research series, John Benjamins;
Associate editor, Pragmatics;
Member of the advisory board, Dialogue Studies series, John Benjamins;
Member of the advisory board, The Israeli Journal of Humor Studies: An International Journal;
Member of the editorial board, Internet Pragmatics, John Benjamins;
Member of the advisory board, Language and Dialogue series, John Benjamins;
Member of the editorial board, Balshanut Ivrit [Hebrew Linguistics, in Hebrew];
Member of the editorial board, Helkat Lashon (in Hebrew);
Member of the academic board, Kaye College of Education.
Previously Chair, Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies: 1991-1998, 2001-2003, 2007-2011
Referee
Applied Linguistics; Pragmatics and Cognition; Journal of Pragmatics; Pragmatics; Target; Interpreting; Discourse Studies; The Israeli Journal of Humor Studies: An International Journal; Language Sciences, Helkat Lashon: A Journal for Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (in Hebrew), Blashanut Ivrit [=Hebrew Linguistics] (in Hebrew)); Israel Studies in Language and Society
Educational activities
Co-author of the Language and Communications program, Haifa University, approved by the Ministry of Education (1985); Academic consultant for the teaching of translation at high-school (1996-1998), advisor for Rosenbluth, P. and N. Ballas, Two-Way Traffic: Translation, Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, Division of Curriculum Development, 1998; Academic consultant of: Sara Lipkin, Mila Tova, (=A Nice Word), textbook for the teaching of Hebrew at high-school), The Centre for Educational Technology, 2008.
Research Grants
|
Research topic |
Granting Agency |
Dates |
|
The construction of ordinariness in mediated public talk: Accountability of communicative action and the private-public interface. 200, 000 euros. With Anita Fetzer |
German-Israel Foundation (GIF) |
January 2019 – December 2021 |
|
ESF Workshop: Follow-ups in Political Discourse, 12200 euros |
European Science Foundation |
April 2012 |
|
Conveying irony and reservations through discursive redundancy, 10000 Shekels |
Rector's grant |
2011 |
|
Self-advocacy in students with reading disabilities: a socio-pragmatic study of discourse patterns in unequal power relations, &276000 |
Israel Science Foundation, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities |
2007-2009 |
|
Discourse patterns in news interviews on Israel television, $34900 |
Israel Science Foundation, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities |
1991-1993 |
|
Speech Acts in Australian English, Canadian French and Israeli Hebrew, 20000 shekel |
The Institute for Canadian Studies, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem |
1986-1987 |
Research students (MA theses, Ph.D dissertations)
|
Thesis Title |
Student Name |
|
Linguistic irony in dialogue in the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: comparison between the original text and the Hebrew translation |
Arad Yulia. M.A. |
|
My Michael by Amos Oz: Face as a Key Element in the Discourse of Hannah and Michael. A comparison of Source vs. Translation |
Ben Ari Zohar. M.A. |
|
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time": Pragmatic Uniquness of the Protagonist's Speech – Comparison of the Sourse vs. Translation |
Ben David Mor. M.A. |
|
The Translation of Irony in Catch-22 |
Hirsh Galia. M.A. |
|
Cultural variation in interviewing styles: challenge and support in El-Jazira and on Israeli television |
Levy Irit M.A. |
|
Kate' Keller's Management of Face and Power in All My Sons by Arthur Miller. Comparison of Source vs. Translation |
Salton Nadia. M.A. |
|
Textual Analysis of Humor and Irony in Jerome K.Jerome's Three Men in a Boat: Comparing the source and its Translations into Hebrew |
Friedman-Cedar Tali. M.A.
|
|
Election discourse on Israeli TV (May 1996): Building emotive connotations through the use of textual links |
Shukrun, Pnina. M.A. |
|
Irony and stream of consciousness in literary translation |
Zioni Smadar. M.A. |
|
Terms of Address in the second-person singular and their translation from French into Hebrew subtitles in two movies: “Entre les Murs” (The Class) and “La journée de la jupe” (Skirt Day) |
Marlene Chimoni. M.A. |
|
Discourse patterns of irony and reservations in online Spanish and Hebrew op-eds |
Veronica Zilberstein, M.A. |
|
Interference of the Arabic Language in Two Novels: Anton Shammas' Arabesques, Originally Written in Hebrew, and Emile Habibi's The Pessoptimist, translated by Anton Shammas from Arabic into Hebrew. |
Siham Wakid, M.A. co-advisor: R Weissbrod. |
|
Irony in on-line readers' comments on op-eds. |
Hila Atkin.M.A |
|
The Medieval "French" Jewish Exegesis as a |
Garzon, Jacob. [co-advisor: Ephraim Meir]. Ph.D. |
|
Between Irony and Humor: A pragmatic model based on textual analysis of Literary works and their translation. |
Hirsh Galia. Ph.D. |
|
Intertextuality in the election discourse on Israeli TV: Linguistic features and rhetorical functions |
Pnina Shukrun-Nagar, Ph.D. |
|
Verbal Irony in Dialogue in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and in Its Adaptations for Film and Television: A Pragmatic Comparison of Source and Transfer |
Arad Yulia. Ph.D. co-advisor: R. Weissbrod |
|
Constructing Interviewers' Control and Involvement In Radio News Interviews |
Aliza Amir. Ph.D. |
|
Positioning through the Interaction between Humor and Irony to Image and Politeness in Source and Target Texts: Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones Books as a Case Study |
Tali Cedar.Ph.D |
|
Powerful women in 19th –century British literature |
Nurit Kedem, Ph.D (in process) |
|
Interactivity of Ironic in Readers' Comments to On-Line Op-Eds. in Haaretz' Website and Facebook Page: Ripples, Threads and Branching Out |
Hila Atkin, Ph.D (in process) |
Publications
Courses
Translation: a pragmatic approach
Indirectness in discourse: a cross-cultural perspective and implications for translation
Discourse and power:a cross-cultural perspective and implications for translation
Indirectness and politeness: a cross-cutural perspective and implications for translation
irony and humour: a cross-cultural perspective and implications for translation
Research
- Current research project: Irony in on-line journalistic commenting: a corpus-based study of cultural variation.
- Challenge in news interviews and in public discourse..
- The pragmatics of traslation.
- the given-new continuum in prosody and in literary discourse.
- terms of address: cultural variation in the tu/vous distinction
Interests
- Cross-cultural pragmatics
- Political and media discourse
- corpus studies
- News interviews
- cultural variation in the two/vous distinction
- Comparative pragmatic analysis in Hebrew, French and English and implications for translation
- Pragmatic analysis of literary texts and implications for translation;
- Self advocacy
- Last modified: 8/02/2020
