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Zohar Kampf | The Smart Family Institute

Zohar Kampf

I am Professor of Language and communication and Vice-Dean for teaching affairs at the Faculty of Social Sciences. My main research interest lies in the multifaceted ties between language, media and politics. My specialization in the field of discourse analysis, acquired during my doctoral years at the Hebrew University, and later at the UCLA center of Language, Interaction and Culture, is applied to processes of communication in everyday and public settings and their intersections. These linkages appear in my studies on public speech acts, mediated political interactions and media accountability processes. It is also highlighted in my works on the changing media coverage of violent conflicts, visual communication and children discourse. In the academic year of 2014-2015 I was a Visiting Resident Scholar at Scholars Program in Culture and Communication at the Annenberg School for Communications (University of Pennsylvania). Since 2017 I serve as Associate Editor of the Journal of Pragmatics.

 

Research Interests

My current research projects focus on the bright side of human communication. The first ("Performing Peace: understanding the conditions for achieving the (re-)conciliatory consequences of discursive actions”; funded by the Israeli Scientific Foundation, 2016-2020) adopts the conceptual frameworks of speech act theory, politeness theory, and peace communication in order to identify the conditions under which amicable actions enhance interstate relationships.

The second (What so special about special relations? The meaning of Friendship in IR funded by the Israeli Scientific Foundation, 2019-2022; with Dr. Gadi Heimann) aims to conceptualize the notion of friendship in IR and to trace the conditions under which friendly relations between leaders and states develop, persist, and grow stronger.

 

Selected Publications

  • Kampf, Z. and Liebes, T. (2013). Transforming Media Coverage of Violent Conflicts: The New Face of War. Palgrave McMillan

  • Kampf, Z & Katriel T. (2016). Political Condemnations:  Public Speech Acts and the Moralization of Discourse). The Handbook of Communication in Cross-Cultural Perspective. D. Carbaugh (Ed.). New-York: Routledge.

  • Kampf. Z. (2015) Political Discourse Analysis. International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. Tracy, K.  (ed). Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

  • Kampf, Z and Blum-Kulka, S. (2007). Do children apologize to each other? Apology events in young Israeli peer discourse. Journal of Politeness Research. 3(1): 11-27.

  • Kampf, Z. (2009). Public (Non-) apologies: The Discourse of Minimizing Responsibility. Journal of Pragmatics 41(11): 2257-2270.

  • Kampf. Z. and Löwenheim N. (2012). Rituals of apology in the international arena. Security Dialogue, 43(1): 43-60.

  • Kampf Z. and Daskal, E. (2014). Communicating Imperfection: The Ethical Principles of News Corrections. Communication Theory, 24(2), 165-185.

  • Kampf, Z. & Hamo, M. (2015).Children talking television: The salience and functions of media content in child peer interactions. Discourse and Communication http://dcm.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/04/09/1750481315576840.full.pdf

  • Kampf, Z (2016). All the Best! Performing Solidarity in Political Discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 93(3) 47-60.

  • Schreiber, M. & Kampf, Z. (2018). Intention work: The scope of journalistic interpretation of political speech acts. Journalism https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918798156

  • Adams, T & Kampf, Z.(2020) “Solemn and just demands”: Seeking apologies in the international arena. Review of International Studies. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210520000261

  • Kampf, Z. Chudi, D Danziger, R & Schreiber, M (2020). "Wait with Falling in Love”: Discursive Evaluation of Amicable Messages Conveyed by Opponents. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X20944977

  • Heimann, G.  & Kampf, ZI (2020). What makes them tick: Challenging the Impersonal Ethos in IR. Cooperation and Conflict. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836720979012

  • Kampf, Z. &  Danziger, R. (2019). "You run faster than Messi and jump higher than Jordan": The Art of Complimenting and Praising in Political Discourse. Journal of Politeness Research 15(1), 1-23.

  • Kampf, Z. & David, Y. (2019).  Too good to be true: The effect of conciliatory message design on compromising attitudes in intractable conflicts. Discourse & Society 30(4)

  • Hamo, M. Kampf, Z & Weiss-Niv, N (2019) Populism as a meta-discursive resource for positioning and framing in mediated political discourse. Discourse, Context & Media (29) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.11.005

  • Kampf, Z. Aldar L, Danziger, R & Schreiber, M (2019). Performing international relations through amicable communication. Intercultural Pragmatics 16(2), 123-151.

  • Friedman, E, Kampf, Z. (2019). "To Thine Own Self be True": The Perceived Meanings and Functions of Political Consistency. Language in Society. https://doi.org/10.1017/S004740451900068X

 

Awards and Prizes

  • 2009-2020   Ten (10) teaching distinction, Faculty of Social Science, Hebrew University

  • 2019-2022 Israel Science Foundation: research grant. Project title: What so special about special relations? The meaning of Friendship in IR

  • 2016-2020 Israel Science Foundation: research grant. Project title: “Performing Peace: understanding the conditions for achieving the (re-)conciliatory consequences of discursive actions”.