This PhD offers a fantastic opportunity for a candidate interested in investigating hate speech in online fan communities to undertake new research on misogyny and homophobia in fansubbing and fan translation forums, such as Subsfactory or YYETS, and YouTube translation communities (e.g. Vietsub). While we anticipate that the successful applicant will refine the research questions and choose case studies, it’s expected that the project will provide an account of the language used in bullying or hate speech in these communities and investigate the forms and practice of mediation that have been used to minimise it.
The successful applicant will explore how linguistic discrimination is carried over from the offline world into the online world, and how aggressors construct their online identity, both individually and as part of a group. Existing datasets collected from Reddit as part of the project ‘The Language of Cybersexism’ will provide opportunities for statistical comparison with the linguistic features seen in fansubbing communities.
This is an exciting opportunity for interdisciplinary study that touches on aspects of linguistics, fandom, translation, sociology, criminology and gender studies. The successful applicant will benefit from the supervisors’ interdisciplinary experience of fan communities, translation, corpus linguistics, gender and sexual discrimination, discourse analysis, law, as well as their experience of dealing with research ethics.
Candidate specification
Candidates must be UK or EU residents and hold a good honours degree (2:1 or above) from a recognised higher education institution.
We require English language proficiency at a minimum of IELTS band 6.5 with no component score below 6.0.
Additionally, we welcome applications from candidates who have native or near-native competence in a language other than English (preferably French or Italian) with a 2:1 (or equivalent) at bachelor’s degree in applied linguistics, media studies, or translation studies (or related disciplines). Ideally, candidates will have a master’s degree in a relevant area, excellent IT skills, especially webscraping, as well as familiarity with corpus-based discourse analysis.
Enquiries and application
Please contact Dr Jonathan Evans (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) to discuss your interest before you apply, quoting both the project code and the project title.
When you are ready to apply, you can use our online application form, making sure you submit a personal statement, proof of your degrees and grades, details of two referees, proof of your English language proficiency and an up-to-date CV.
Please also submit a research proposal (up to 1000 words), detailing how you would develop this project:
• What research questions would you pose?
• How would you design the project?
• What research methods would you use?
• How would you engage with/ build on existing research?
Our ‘How to Apply’ page offers further guidance on the PhD application process.
If you want to be considered for this funded PhD opportunity you must quote project code SLAL4360219 when applying.
More details here: https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/misogyny-and-homophobia-in-online-amateur-translation-communities/?p104350