Linguist and German studies scholar
Dr. Daniel Knuchel
Thinking language and digitality together is the core of my research programme, in method and in subject. My research lies in corpus pragmatics and digital linguistics as well as in the discourse analysis and sociolinguistics of contemporary German; I work from a cultural-analytic perspective, empirically and with digital methods. Digitality plays a double role here: it changes the objects of linguistics, from web forums and platform communication to interaction with language models, and it changes the procedures we use to study them.
My concept of language is usage-based and cultural-analytic: language is a practice in which knowledge and meaning are produced and solidify into patterns of use. Two guiding questions follow. What can contemporary German tell us about how a digitally shaped society orders knowledge, marks belonging and shifts communicative norms? And how should language be described when platforms, tools and generative systems increasingly take part in producing it alongside humans? In my work, computing and reading intertwine, and I examine every tool for the research logic it brings into the analysis.
Research areas
Discourse, knowledge, society
I am interested in how knowledge, identity and communicative norms emerge and shift in linguistic practice: how a society talks about HIV/AIDS, sexuality or protest, what counts as knowledge in the process, and what happens to a topic once public interest fades.
Postdigital writing cultures
I am interested in how writing changes when digital tools and generative AI are part of the writing environment: which practices emerge, which texts, which ideas of authorship and authenticity. At school, at university and in public administration, often together with the writers themselves.
Corpus pragmatics and digital methods
To pursue these questions I adapt digital methods and develop them further: from keyness and collocations to word embeddings, multimodal corpora and language models. I examine every procedure for the research logic it brings into the analysis.
News
- October 2026The project Language Regimes of the Machine with Naomi Truan (Leiden) has been funded by the University of Zurich Global Funding Scheme.
- Call for papersInternational workshop “Doing Multilingualism with Generative AI: Recentering the Users”, University of Zurich, 10–11 March 2027, with Naomi Truan (Leiden). Keynotes: Bettina Migge and Anna Weichselbraun. Abstracts by 30 October 2026 to daniel.knuchel@ds.uzh.ch.
- Since September 2026Zurich part of the expert report Chatbots at the interface between social administration and its public for the IAQ Duisburg-Essen, with Bettina M. Bock (Cologne).
- 2026Article “Postdigitale Schreibkulturen im Kontext generativer KI” in Zeitschrift für Kulturlinguistik 1. All publications
Upcoming talks and events
- 13.11.2026Postdigitale Schreibkulturen in Zeiten von LLM. Online-Kolloquium Artificial Friday, auf Einladung von PD Dr. Nina Kalwa, Universität Tübingen (online).
- 20.11.2026Schreibforschung und Citizen Science in der Schule. Gastvortrag im Seminar Linguistics goes Citizen Science (Y. Ilg), Universität Zürich.
- 27.11.2026Chatbots in der kommunalen Grundsicherung als Beispiel für automatisierte Kommunikation. Arbeitsgruppe an der Tagung Bessere Sozialpolitik durch technologischen Wandel? Ansätze und Ausblicke, Institut Arbeit und Qualifikation, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
- 04.12.2026Linguistik, Schule und KI. Germanistiktag 2026 Germanistik und Schule, Universität Bern.
In brief
I am a senior teaching and research fellow (Oberassistent) at the chair of Noah Bubenhofer, Department of German Studies, University of Zurich. I completed my PhD in 2023 at Zurich and Heidelberg with a corpus-pragmatic study of how HIV/AIDS is talked about. I have taught at the universities of Zurich, Basel, Geneva, Heidelberg and Skopje, see Teaching. The full career is in my CV.