Text research

Text analysis as a research direction was introduced to Estonian linguistics in the 1990s. At that time, the focus was predominantly on the qualitative analysis of media texts, but over time both the research material and methodology have diversified. Nowadays, various genre studies set the tone, for example analyzing the communication goals, structure and language of administrative texts, academic texts and Covid-19 restrictions labels. In discourse analysis the focus is currently on gender-marked vocabulary.

Research done in the framework of text analysis supports text-centered mother tongue teaching in both general education and higher education. Process-based text creation and subject literacy have become the main focus at the institute.

 

Researchers related to the field

Ilona Tragel
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of General Linguistics
Associate Professor of General Linguistics
Jakobi 2-442
526 4065 (3356)
Ilona Tragel has been working at the University of Tartu since 2001, currently as an Associate Professor of General Linguistics. She has also held the positions of a researcher, head of UT language center and the head of doctoral school. In 2014–2018 she was a lecturer of Estonian at Beijing Foreign Studies University. She defended her doctoral thesis on Estonian core verbs in 2003 at UT. Her theoretical background lies in cognitive linguistics. Her research interests are verbal semantics and polysemy, recently also academic texts and language of Covid-19. Read more: www.ilonatragel.ut.ee.
Ilona Tragel
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of General Linguistics
Associate Professor of General Linguistics
Jakobi 2-442
526 4065 (3356)
Riina Reinsalu
Department of Estonian
Centre for Estonian Orthography and Composition
Lecturer in Estonian Text Linguistics (employment contract suspended)
Riina Reinsalu is a lecturer of Estonian text linguistics who is focused on different genres in the framework of text analysis. She is particularly interested in the legal and administrative language, including applying the principles of plain language in the communication between citizens and local authorities. Riina coordinates the activities of Centre for Estonian Orthography and Composition and supports students in writing academic texts. As a professional copy editor, she also gives various language editing courses.
Riina Reinsalu
Department of Estonian
Centre for Estonian Orthography and Composition
Lecturer in Estonian Text Linguistics (employment contract suspended)
Helen Hint
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of General Linguistics
Lecturer in Academic Literacy 0.25 p, Research Fellow 0.75 p, Programme Director
Jakobi 2-430
+372 737 6022
Helen Hint
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of General Linguistics
Lecturer in Academic Literacy 0.25 p, Research Fellow 0.75 p, Programme Director
Jakobi 2-430
+372 737 6022
Maigi Vija
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Applied Linguistics
Junior Lecturer in Literacy Education, Programme Director
Jakobi 2-429
Maigi Vija
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Applied Linguistics
Junior Lecturer in Literacy Education, Programme Director
Jakobi 2-429
Külli Habicht
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Estonian
Associate Professor of Estonian Language
Jakobi 2-444
Külli Habicht is an associate professor of Estonian language. Her main fields of research are morphosyntax, inflectional and derivational morphology and Old Literary Estonian. She has also studied pragmatics and historical sociolinguistics. Her research is based on functional, usage-based theory. Külli has researched grammaticalization of adpositions and modal constructions, pragmaticalization of discourse particles and diachronic development of the vocabulary in written Estonian. Her current projects include the compiling of a digital dictionary of Old Literary Estonian and investigating pragmatic particles in different registers. She takes part of the research done by The Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies through the project group PRG341 led by Helle Metslang. She is the co-author of the monography Estonian Inflectional Morphology, four dictionaries of Old Literary Estonian and a gymnasium textbook Language and Society. Külli has been a part of the national Estonian language exam work group and taken part of organising a number of Estonian language Olympiads.
Külli Habicht
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Estonian
Associate Professor of Estonian Language
Jakobi 2-444
Elisabeth Kaukonen
doctoral student
Elisabeth Kaukonen is a doctoral student, whose field of interest and topic of research is gender-marked vocabulary in Estonian language, its usage and the stands of language users towards gendered vocabulary and feminisation of the language.
Elisabeth Kaukonen
doctoral student
Petar Kehayov

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Tartu Ülikooli peahoone

The 14th CIFU will take place in August 2025 at the University of Tartu

MEDAL venue

MEDAL Summer School in Experimental Linguistics will take place in Nijmegen