Convenors: Yvette Wang, Ngoc Luu, Dr. Clay Becker

When: Every Wednesday,16:00-17:00 (UK time) during term time

Where: Click here to join the meetingLink opens in a new window + the in-person site will mainly be A0.23; Only on 08 May, it will be S0.08.

01.05.2024, 16:00 - 17:00

From “Liebe…” to “lebwohl” – Exploring the opening and closing formulae of German 19th-century private letters

Laura Fischlhammer - Paris Lodron University of Salzburg

Abstract:

Phrasing the beginning and closing of a letter poses a major challenge for any writer. In the epistolary culture of the 19th century, these constituents, framing the letter in a “sandwich format” (Fitzpatrick 2004), were regarded as a “touchstone” of every letter (Baasner 1999) and represent “overt markers of writer-addressee relationship” (Palander-Collin 2011).

For this talk, I present a corpus-based study on these formulae in German private letters. I will analyse 1303 letters addressed to close relatives, friends and spouses deriving from three corpora of letters by mostly non-proficient writers: soldiers (cf. Neumann 2019), patients (cf. Schiegg 2022) and emigrants. The main focus lies on exploring the text-type formulae (salutation and address; farewell and signature). Not only diachronic changes will be analysed, but also the influence of the relationship between writer and addressee as well as the effect of the power relations within the family.

Bio:

Laura Fischlhammer is currently a PhD student at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg. Written in the context of the trinational WEAVE-project "Variantenpragmatik des Deutschen. Kommunikative Muster im Vergleich" (“Variational Pragmatics of German. Comparing Communicative Patterns”), her dissertation explores pragmatic variation in 19th- and early 20th-century German private letters. Specifically, she analyses diatopic, diachronic and diastratic variation of formulaic language (e.g., opening and closing formulae, nominal vocatives) in letters from emigrants, soldiers and patients. Furthermore, she analyses the speech act set ‘request’ in these same letters, focusing on variation in directness and explicitness across the German-speaking countries.

08.05.2024,16:00 - 17:00

Technologies Chinese Students Use for Academic Purposes

Dr Yan Yeung - Coventry University, Global Banking School

Abstract:

Chinese students make up the largest group of international students around the world, yet university tutors outside of China are often unaware of affordances of the electronic dictionaries (EDs) they use. The overwhelming majority of dictionary user studies have either chosen to examine the outcomes of ED use or focus on the ‘usability’ (i.e. user-friendliness) aspects of EDs. In other words, how users actually make use and make sense of dictionary entries and the content quality of EDs have been largely overlooked. This study, therefore, probed the under-researched areas: the ‘usefulness’ and the process of ED consultation. The study identified usage behaviours typical to native-Chinese-speaking learners as dictionary users, including how their L1 influences their decision-making before, during and after consultations. The findings also offer new insights related to the ED itself, inform further research and teaching strategies in the ELT/EFL/EAP areas and enrich methodological insights.

Bio:

Dr Yan Yeung holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics (Coventry University), with over ten years of EFL/EAP teaching experience in Hong Kong and the UK. Her research interests include lexicography, EAP, EFL and second language acquisition. She is the recipient of the A.S. Hornby Dictionary Research Awards in 2020. Her PhD thesis focuses on the bilingual dictionary use of native Chinese students. In addition to offering new insights into advanced Chinese EFL learners’ dictionary usage behaviours, her research used a novel research design, which expanded the methodological possibilities for qualitative research on dictionary use. Dr Yeung is currently a Study Skills Lecturer and Deputy of Academic Writing and Research Skills at Global Banking School (in partnership with Oxford Brookes University). She is also a holder of an MA in Applied Linguistics and ELT (Coventry University), MA in Creative Writing (University of Birmingham) and PGDE (The Chinese University of Hong Kong).

15.05.2024, 16:00 - 17:00

A joke that bites: Prosody of Sarcasm in Turkish

Cagla Karatepe - University of Warwick

Abstract:

The presence of an ironic tone of voice has been extensively studied in several languages, with one notable exception being Turkish. Many of these studies utilize a pre-designed set of examples to distinguish between sarcasm and non-sarcasm. However, in my research, I opted to analyze a comedy setting, where naturally occurring instances of "sarcasm" were abundant. The data collected included improvised dialogues, and the examples were not necessarily fictional.

Bio:

Cagla Karatepe is currently a PhD student at the University of Warwick. Her main research interests are discourse analytical approaches, (im)politeness, humour, prosody, and their interaction in various discourses, particularly in media contexts. She has also gained interest in professional communication, crisis communication, and socio-phonetics during her time at Warwick. Her PhD project is focused on how sarcasm is delivered with prosody in a humorous context.

Cagla supports teaching in various MSc seminars at the Department of Applied Linguistics. Before studying at Warwick, she worked as a translator for the Ministry of Treasury and Finance in Turkey for over 10 years. She is currently running a family business in the UK at the same time completing her PhD at Warwick.

22.05.2024, 16:00-17:00

Developing an Understanding of Culture via a CA-based Blended Pedagogy in a Virtual Exchange Programme

Winnie Wai Lan Shum - The Hong Kong Polytechnic University & University of Warwick

Abstract:

One of the purposes of my research project is to help participants understand the discursive nature of culture. To do this, I proposed a CA-based Blended Pedagogy in the project anddesigned a short course on intercultural interaction for a virtual exchange activity with participants mainly from Hong Kong and UK universities. In this talk, I will share my temporary findings regarding how participants’ understanding of culture changed, maintained and/or fluctuated along the continuum of the essentialist and non-essentialist perspectives. This will hopefully provide more insights into the developmental journey of learners’ cultural understanding. Is it an idealized one with linear progression from essentialist cultural understanding to a non-essentialist one? Or there exists other possible developmental patterns?

Bio:

Winnie SHUM is a PhD student at the University of Warwick. She is also currently working at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University – English Language Centre as an English Language Instructor. Apart from teaching English for Academic Purpose and Workplace Communicationcourses, she has also been actively involved in designing and organising virtual exchange programmes to enhance students’ intercultural communication skills and their use of English as a lingua franca. Her research interests include developing pedagogy for intercultural language teaching and learning, employing technology to enhance learning experience and quality, intercultural pragmatics, discourse and conversation analysis.

29.05.2024, 16:00 - 17:00

Representations of History in Materials for TESOL Teacher Education: a Critical Review

Professor Richard Smith (& Professor Tony Liddicoat) - University of Warwick

Abstract:

Our research focus derives from our belief in the potential value of historical perspectives for empowering teachers. But what is the current place of history within (different contexts of) TESOL teacher education? Our research in this paper is based on the working assumption that analysing the contents of widely used TESOL teacher preparation textbooks will provide answers to this question.

We first set the scene by considering different contexts for pre-service TESOL teacher education. We then engage in a critical review of introductory TESOL teacher education texts which appear to be widely used in these different contexts, considering, for each of the texts, the extent to which the history of language teaching has a place at all and the nature of the view of history implied. We consider likely effects of these representations of history and conclude with suggestions for possible antidotes and alternatives.

Bio:

Richard Smith is a Professor of ELT and Applied Linguistics in the Department of Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, where he founded the Warwick ELT Archive in 2002. His most recent publications in the field of history of language learning and teaching are Policies and Practice in Language Learning and Teaching: 20th-Century Historical Perspectives (Amsterdam University Press, 2022) and Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching: Historical Perspectives (Benjamins, 2023), co-edited with Sabine Doff and Tim Giesler, respectively.

Further information:

https://warwick.ac.uk/richardcsmith

05.06.2024, 16:00 - 17:00

(Im)possibility of Ethical Encounters in Places of Separation: Aesthetics as a Quiet Applied Linguistics Praxis

Professor Maggie Kubanyiova - University of Leeds

Abstract:

What is the possibility of ethical encounters in places that are historically, spatially, and morally configured to avoid them? And what can applied linguistics do to create such a possibility? This study is located in a rural community in eastern Slovakia with a history of separation between Slovak and Roma ethnic groups and the systemic spatial, economic and linguistic marginalisation of the latter. This paper draws on relational ethics to foreground the perceiving subject’s ethical responsibility. I take up the scholarship on semiotic repertoires and exploit their performative power to affect the perceiving subject. Advocating for aesthetics as an applied linguistics research praxis, this presentation both documents and invites a sensory entanglement with others through a series of aesthetic invitations. I see such an embodied engagement as a way for applied linguistics to stage the ground for ethical encounters, even if never guarantee an outcome. I discuss what this research pathway might mean for doing applied linguistics research in social and educational settings with entrenched narratives about the other and how quiet applied linguistics – one which privileges sensory attending and epistemological indeterminacy – might be a form of activism that disturbs the realm of the impossible. I will invite the audience to join me in pondering implications for their respective areas of applied linguistics inquiry, including language pedagogy, language teacher education, intercultural communication, multilingualism, etc.

Bio:

Maggie Kubanyiova is professor of language education at the University of Leeds where she directs the Centre for Language Education Research. Her research cuts across sociolinguistics, education and arts to investi­gate educational encounters in multilingual settings. She was a principal investigator on an AHRC project, Ethics and Aesthetics of Encountering the Other (ETHER; 2020–2022) and continues to work with educators, students, creatives and third-sector organisations to pursue the practical consequences of this research for individuals and communities. Under the Big Tree: Šuňiben kamibnaha (2023; Next Generation Publications) is the outcome of her collaboration with Sophie Herxheimer (a UK-based poet and artist) and Anna Koptová (a Slovak-based Romani translator and activist). She has edited (with Angela Creese) a special issue of Applied Linguistics Review, entitled Applied Linguistics, Ethics and Aesthetics of Encountering the Other. Her forthcoming edited collection Listening Without Borders (with Parinita Shetty; Multilingual Matters) explores questions of ethical encounters with difference through interdisciplinary inquiry.

12.06.2024, 16:00 - 17:00

Donald Trump has Lowered THOUGHT for Five Decades: Lifespan Language Change and Stability in New York City English Vowels amid Shifting Public Personae

Dr. Christopher Strelluf, Ayman Alrajhi, Sophie Frankpitt, Xinran Gao, Cagla Karatepe, and Holly Taylor - the Warwick Sociophonetics Reading Group

Abstract:

This project examines changes in the qualities of Donald Trump’s vowels from 1980 to 2023. Donald Trump’s lifelong navigation of national celebrity brings together research strands that explore (a) lifespan language change among public personalities and (b) politicians’ selection of variants to index political identities. Trump’s home dialect of New York City English (NYCE) provides resources for Trump to draw upon to construct personae—for instance to highlight “New Yorker” identity or project qualities of toughness. At the same time, Trump’s curated personal qualities of inflexibility might be indexed by resistance to language change, and NYCE may be sociolinguistically marked as incongruous with attainment of high social status. We argue that Trump’s participation in lifespan language change sheds light on relationships among persona-construction and participation in (and resistance to) lifespan language change.

Authorship:

Christopher Strelluf, Ayman Alrajhi, Sophie Frankpitt, Xinran Gao, Cagla Karatepe, and Holly Taylor (the Warwick Sociophonetics Reading Group)

The Warwick Sociophonetics Reading Group meets three times each term to read and discuss recent research in sociophonetics. Any interested staff, graduate, and undergraduate students are welcome to attend. This project was undertaken by reading group members to explore methods and issues that were inspired by their readings, and was supported by a Department of Applied Linguistics Research Activity grant.

19.06.2024, 16:00 - 17:00

"Nowadays girls want to hold up more than half of the sky" – Discovering Hegemonic Masculinities of Chinese International Students in the UK

Mingzhi Li, University of Warwick

Abstract:

Hegemonic masculinities have been considered a milestone in masculinity studies over the past few decades. Scholars in various contexts have attempted to identify and demystify hegemonic masculinities. However, how Chinese international students in different contexts construct hegemonic notions of masculinities remains under-researched. Based on data collected from seven focus groups and utilising a discourse-analytical approach, I will present findings on the construction process of Chinese hegemonic masculinities among Chinese international students in the UK. The theoretical basis of this study is Connell and Messerschmidt’s (2005) hegemonic masculinities theory and Louie’s (2015) wen-wu paradigm. The findings will also mainly be discussed in relation to these two theories.

Bio:

Mingzhi Li is currently a final-year PhD student in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick. His research interests lie in topics relevant to language and gender, gender identities, and masculinity studies. He is also supporting teaching in various seminars of the MSc Intercultural Communication for Business and the Professions (ICBP). He himself holds an MSc in ICBP from the University of Warwick and an MSc in Language Sciences – Language Development from UCL.