Dr. Ruth Derksen
Senior Instructor Emerita, PhD Philosophy of Language , University of British Columbia
Integrating the philosophy of language (rhetoric, audience design, discourse analysis and genre theory) into rhetoric courses in the Department of English and professional communication courses in the Faculty of Applied Science.
Media
From ‘deadly enemy’ to ‘covidiots’: Words matter when talking about COVID-19
The Conversation CanadaOnline
For Vancouver’s Mennonite Maids, Strength in a Shared Home
Biography
Dr. Derksen’s research and teaching activities integrate the philosophy of language (rhetoric, discourse analysis and genre theory) into professional communication courses taught in English and Applied Science departments. More recently, she has designed curriculum in the CIVL and MTRL engineering departments that incorporates communication competency into specific engineering design projects.
She has presented and published papers on audience design, linguistic constructions, and genre analysis in Canada, USA, Europe and Russia. She has also produced a film for broadcast on a Canadian network, and published two books (one winning an honorary mention for the Lieutenant Governor’s award, 2014).
Additional research has been conducted in India that investigates the gap between international students’ assumptions about success in English language use and a UBC Technical Communication instructor’s measurement of that success (2013). This research emulates methodology in an earlier project (1998) commissioned by the British Columbia Ministry of Education which measures the gap between secondary and post-secondary English proficiency in the province.