Almut Köster
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About
Almut Köster was born in Heidelberg, Germany and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, where she attended primary and secondary school. She received a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Wesleyan University (Connecticut, USA) in 1980 and an M.A. in Applied English Linguistics from the University of Birmingham (UK) in 1989. In 2001 she was awarded a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Nottingham (UK), after completing a dissertation on naturally-occurring workplace conversations in British and American businesses and organisations. Prior to her appointment to a chair in English Business Communication at the WU in September 2014, she was Senior Lecturer in English Language at the University of Birmingham in England, where she taught English Language and Applied Linguistics and supervised dissertations at all levels. She also has a Diploma in Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Adults, which she was awarded in 1983, and has extensive practical experience working as an English language teacher, teacher trainer, and director of studies in Germany, France and the USA.
Research Interests
Almut Köster’s research focuses on spoken workplace discourse, and she has investigated key areas of business communication, such as decision-making and negotiating. She is particularly interested in the ways in which linguistic features such as idioms, metaphor or vague language are deployed in workplace talk in pursuing both transactional and relational goals. Her interest in interpersonal features of language has also led her to examine conflictual interactions and the use of small talk at work. Her methodological approach to analysing workplace interactions is situated within the field of discourse analysis, drawing both on conversation analysis and genre analysis, and combining these approaches with corpus linguistics. She also has a keen interest in applying her research to the field of Teaching English for Business Communication: she has co-authored a Business English textbook and frequently speaks at conferences and events for language teachers.
Professor Köster supervises PhD and doctoral students investigating various aspects of workplace and business discourse.
Key Publications
Koester, A. 2017. Conflict Talk. In B. Vine (ed), The Routledge Handbook of Language in the Workplace. New York: Routledge.
Koester, Almut. 2017. Spoken Workplace Discourse. In G. Mautner & F. Rainer (eds), Business Communication: Linguistic Approaches. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Koester, A. 2014. “We’d be prepared to do something, like if you say.” Hypothetical reported speech in business negotiations. English for Specific Purposes 36: 35-46.
Koester, A. 2012. Corpora and workplace discourse. In K. Hyland, M. H. Chau, & M. Handford (eds), Corpus Applications in Applied Linguistics: current approaches and future directions. London: Continuum.
Koester, A. 2010. Workplace Discourse. London: Continuum.
Handford, M. and Koester, A. 2010. “It’s not Rocket Science”: Metaphors and Idioms in Conflictual Business Meetings. Text & Talk 30 (1): 27-51.
Koester, A. 2007. “About Twelve Thousand or so”: Vagueness in North American and UK Offices. In J. Cutting (ed), Vague Language Explored. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 40-61.
Koester, A. 2006. Investigating Workplace Discourse. London: Routledge.
Koester, A. 2004. The Language of Work. London: Routledge.
Koester, A. 2004. Relational sequences in workplace genres. Journal of Pragmatics 36: 1405-1428.
Buch, Monographie
2010 | Köster, Almut. 2010. Workplace Discourse. London: Continuum. Mehr erfahren |
2006 | Köster, Almut. 2006. Investigating Workplace Discourse. London: Routledge. Mehr erfahren |
2004 | Köster, Almut. 2004. The Language of Work. London: Routledge. Mehr erfahren |
Originalbeitrag in Fachzeitschrift
2021 | Köster, Almut. 2021. Small stories in short interactions: The functions of narratives in care home worker interactions. Narrative Inquiry. Mehr erfahren |
2019 | Handford, Michael, Köster, Almut. 2019. The construction of conflict talk across workplace contexts: Towards a theory of conflictual compact. Language Awareness. 28 (3), 186-206. Mehr erfahren |
2018 | Köster, Almut, Handford, Michael. 2018. `It's not good saying ¿Well it it might do that or it might not¿¿: Hypothetical Reported Speech in Business Meetings. Journal of Pragmatics. 130 67-80. Mehr erfahren |
2014 | Köster, Almut. 2014. "We'd be prepared to do something,like if you say.." hypothetical reported speech in business negotiations. English for Specific Purposes 36 35-46. Mehr erfahren |
2011 | Chen, Phyllis, Littlemore, Jeannette, Barnden, John, Köster, Almut. 2011. Difficulties in metaphor comprehension faced by international students whose first language is not English. Applied Linguistics 32 (4): 408-429. Mehr erfahren |
2010 | Handford, Michael, Köster, Almut 2010. 'It's not Rocket Science': Metaphors and Idioms in Conflictual Business Meetings. Text and Talk 30 (1): 27-51. Mehr erfahren |
2008 | Low, Graham, Littlemore, Jeannette, Köster, Almut. 2008. Metaphor use in three UK university lectures. Applied Linguistics 29 (3): 428-455. Mehr erfahren |
2004 | Köster, Almut. 2004. Relational sequences in workplace genres. Journal of Pragmatics 36 (8): 1405-1428. Mehr erfahren |
2002 | Köster, Almut. 2002. The Performance of speech acts in workplace conversations and the teaching of communicative functions. System 30 (2), 167-184. Mehr erfahren |
Originalbeitrag in Buch (Sammelwerk)
2022 | Köster, Almut. 2022. Language Awareness and Business Communication. In: Language Awareness in the Professions, Hrsg. Cambridge University Press, 140-161. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mehr erfahren |
2017 | Köster, Almut. 2017. Conflict Talk. In: The Routledge Handbook of Language in the Workplace , Hrsg. Bernadette Vine , 272-283. New York: Routledge. Mehr erfahren |
2017 | Köster, Almut. 2017. Spoken Workplace Discourse. In: Business Communication: Linguistic Approaches, Hrsg. Gerlinde Mautner & Franz Rainer, 629-656. Berlin: De Gruyter. Mehr erfahren |
2012 | Köster, Almut. 2012. Corpora and workplace discourse. In: Corpus Applications in Applied Linguistics: current approaches and future, Hrsg. K. Hyland, M. H. Chau, & M. Handford, 47-66. London: Continuum. Mehr erfahren |
2012 | Köster, Almut, Handford, Michael. 2012. Spoken professional genres. In: The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Hrsg. J. P. Gee and M. Handford, 252-267. London: Routledge. Mehr erfahren |
2012 | Köster, Almut. 2012. Working in English. In: Worlds of English: Talk, Text and Technology, Hrsg. D. Allington and B. Mayor, 135-163. London: Routledge. Mehr erfahren |
2010 | Köster, Almut. 2010. Building small specialised corpora. In: The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics, Hrsg. M. McCarthy and A. OKeeffe, 66-78. London: Routledge. Mehr erfahren |
2009 | Köster, Almut. 2009. Conversation Analysis in the language classroom. In: Introducing Applied Linguistics: Key Concepts and Skills, Hrsg. Susan Hunston & David Oakey, S. 37-47. London: Routledge. Mehr erfahren |
2007 | Köster, Almut. 2007. “About Twelve Thousand or so”: Vagueness in North American and UK Offices. In: Vague Language Explored, Hrsg. Joan Cutting, S. 40-61. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mehr erfahren |