Michaela Winchatz

Degrees

BA in German from Rutgers College of Rutgers University in New Jersey. After receiving two Fulbright grants for study in Munich, Germany, she completed an MA in psycholinguistics/speech communication from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany. During her doctoral studies in the United States she returned to Germany on a DAAD grant to conduct dissertation research in the town of Landau. She received her PhD in speech communication from the University of Washington in Seattle. 

Languages

English, German

Areas of Interest and Specialization

She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in cultures in conversation, gender and communication, intercultural communication, language and power, and fieldwork methods.

Publications and Research

Her research interests include ethnography of communication, ethnographic fieldwork methods, discourse analysis, intercultural communication, as well as German language and culture. She has published research articles and reviews in such journals as Communication Monographs, Discourse Studies, Field Methods, International Journal of Communication, Journal of Friendship Studies (AMITY), Quarterly Journal of Speech, and Research on Language and Social Interaction (ROLSI).

Her most recent research focuses on cultural terms for talk in both German and English, the study of which provides insight into how talk itself is valued differently across societies, and, in turn, unveils deep normative systems that often lie at the base of intercultural misunderstandings.

Selected Publications

• Winchatz, M. R., Sprain, L.,Poutiainen, S., and Ho, E. (2022). “We don’t say that word out loud”: A grounded practical theory for analyzing difficult data in language and social interaction classrooms. Communication Education, DOI:10.1080/03634523.2022.2148708​​
  
• Winchatz, M. R., Martin, D. L., and Elia, E. (2021). There’s no such thing as a free lunch: A dialectical analysis of social cheating during financial transactions among friends. AMITY: The Journal of Friendship Studies, 7(1): 49-63.
  
• Von Over, B., Dori-Hacohen, G., & Winchatz, M.R. (2018). Policing the boundaries of the sayable: The public negotiation of profane, prohibited, and proscribed speech. In Scollo, Michelle and Trudy Milburn (Eds.), Cultural Discourse Analysis in Situated Contexts: A Tribute to Donal Carbaugh. ^*NCA Language & Social Interaction Outstanding Scholarly Publication Award (November 13, 2020)
• Winchatz, M. R. (2017). Ethnography of cultural communication. In Young Yun Kim (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication. Malden, MA: Wiley & Sons.
• Winchatz, M. R. (2016). Jammern as a German way of speaking. In Carbaugh, Donal (Ed.), Handbook of Communication in Cross-Cultural Perspective (pp. 65-75). London: Routledge.
• Winchatz, M. R. (2010). Participant-observation and the nonnative ethnographer: Implications of positioning on discourse-centered fieldwork. Field Methods, 22(4), 340-356.
• Winchatz, M. R., and Kozin, A. (2008). Comical hypothetical: Arguing for a conversational phenomenon. Discourse Studies, 10(3), 383-405.
• Winchatz, M. R. (2007). German pronominal systems in conflict: The discursive negotiation of du and Sie. International Journal of Communication, 17(1), 67-90.