The GAL Research School for Methods in Empirical Pragmatics (MeEP) was a three-day summer school for Master's and PhD students from 12th - 14th September 2016. Leading international researchers in pragmatics joined us to cover methodological aspects of various fields of enquiry. The MeEP was targeted at young researchers, whether pondering on the design, struggling with putting the method into practice or trying to deepen existing knowledge about working empirically in the field of pragmatics. Participation served to enhance knowledge and abilities in all steps involved in the linguistic methodological process: Selecting the method most suitable to a project, collecting data, and coding and systematically analysing them.

The MeEP was organised into sections by topic. Each section consisted of an input lecture and a workshop for hands-on practice. Click here to learn more about the contents of each section.

We are grateful to the four speakers for their contributions:

Anne Barron (Lüneburg)
Michael Haugh (Brisbane)
John M. Kirk (Belfast)
Miriam Locher (Basel)

Setup
Input lecture + workshop
Each speaker gave an input lecture and told the participants about the characteristics of their respective methods. They described its potential, but also possible drawbacks to enable the participants to make a more informed choice when it came to their projects.
At the same time, they learned about current and new developments in the field, as the speakers made reference to their own past, present and future research projects.
Following the lecture, each speaker hosted a workshop relating to the method they discussed. The idea of the workshop was for the participants to try out some tools under the supervision of an expert.

Individual advising sessions
We set aside time slots so our participants could get individual advice on their current project from one of our speakers.