| Ruth Wodak | |
| Birth Date: | 12 July 1950 |
| Birth Place: | London, United Kingdom |
Ruth Wodak (born 12 July 1950 in London) is an Austrian linguist, who is Emeritus Distinguished Professor and Chair in Discourse Studies in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University[1] and Professor in Linguistics at the University of Vienna.
Her research is mainly located in discourse studies and in critical discourse analysis. Together with her former colleagues and Ph.D students in Vienna (Rudolf de Cillia, Gertraud Benke, Helmut Gruber, Florian Menz, Martin Reisigl, Usama Suleiman, Christine Anthonissen), she elaborated the Discourse Historical Approach, an interdisciplinary, problem-oriented approach to analysing the change of discursive practices over time and in various genres.
She is member of the editorial board of a range of linguistic journals, co-editor of Discourse and Society, Critical Discourse Studies, and of the Journal of Language and Politics. She was the founding editor (together with Paul Chilton) of the book series Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture. She was also section editor of "Language and Politics" for the Second Edition of the Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Ruth Wodak chaired the Humanities and Social Sciences Panel for EURYI Award, in the European Science Foundation from 2006 to 2008.
In 1996, she was awarded the Wittgenstein-Preis, the highest Austrian science award, for her projects focused on "Discourses on Un/employment in EU organizations; Debates on NATO and Neutrality in Austria and Hungary; The Discursive Construction of European Identities; Attitudes towards EU-Enlargement; Racism at the Top. Parliamentary Debates on Immigration in Six EU countries; The Discursive Construction of the Past - Individual and Collective Memories of the German Wehrmacht and the Second World War."
In October 2006, she was awarded the Woman's Prize of the City of Vienna.
She was awarded the Kerstin Hesselgren Chair of the Swedish Parliament and stayed at University of Örebro, Sweden, from March to June 2008.
In December 2011, Professor Karl Heinz Töchterle, Minister of Science and Education, presented her with the Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria (Großes Silbernes Ehrenzeichen für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich), in Vienna, on behalf of the President of Austria, Dr Heinz Fischer. "The award citation emphasises the social relevance and impact of her outstanding research on the discursive construction of national and transnational identities and patterns of racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism."[2]
She was elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2013.[3]
Ruth Wodak has been a Fulbright Austria Scholar at Stanford University. She has held visiting professorships at Uppsala University, University of Minnesota, and Georgetown University, and a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship at the University of East Anglia.
In 2023 Wodak received an honorary degree from the University of Warwick.[4]