About

Dr Will Amos is Associate Professor in the Translation and Transcultural Studies section of SMLC. Will holds a BA (Hons) in French Studies, an MA in Modern Languages, and a PhD in Sociolinguistics, all from the University of Liverpool. Before joining the French department at Warwick in 2017, Will held positions at the universities of Liverpool, Lancaster, and Lorraine (France), and worked with the AHRC theme 'Translating Cultures' (2013-17).

Research

Will's research falls mainly within sociolinguistics, including linguistic landscapes (LL), multilingualism, minority languages, language and gender, and transcultural translation in non-literary contexts. Will has published articles on simultaneity and language mixing in French commercial advertisements, hierarchical multilingualism on bilingual French/Occitan street signs, and ethnolinguistic identity in Liverpool's chinatown; he has also written book contributions on developing contexts of Corsican public writing, experimental models for conducting large-scale empirical LL research, and institutional identity construction and maintenance through language.

Will's current research focusses on the gendered aspects of French language elements on t-shirts sold in high-street chains in South Africa and in the UK. In 2021, Will co-founded the WE•ID Wearable IdeologiesLink opens in a new windowinterdisciplinary research network, along with Dr Gilles Baro and Dr Paddy Ross, of the universities of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and Durham respectively. The team are currently funded to undertake a series of psychological experiments involving t-shirt texts. Will is also a member of the Languages in Coventry Research GroupLink opens in a new window and the Centre for Digital EnquiryLink opens in a new window at Warwick. He is currently co-editing the Bloomsbury Handbook of Linguistic Landscapes alongside Robert Blackwood and Stefania Tufi (expected publication 2022).

Teaching and supervision

Will's teaching interests are in linguistics and sociolinguistics, applied translation, multilingualism, language ideologies, and language and gender. He would be keen to supervise postgraduate study in any of these areas, especially in linguistic landscape studies, both within and beyond French.

Publications