The organisers of BAAL 2014 identified corpus studies of social issues as one area they would like to foreground in the conference. When the plenary speaker in that area withdrew, we invited four researchers working in this broad area to participate in a colloquium.

The speakers are:

 

• Ingo Bachmann (Department of Anglophone Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen)

• Kieran O'Halloran (Department of Educational and Professional Studies, King's College London)

• Bróna Murphy (Institute for Education, Teaching, and Leadership, University of Edinburgh)

• Nelya Koteyko (Department of Media and Communication, University of Leicester)

The colloquium is intended to be interactive. Each participant will give a short paper on methodological issues in their studies, leaving plenty of time for discussion between the panelists and with the participants at the conference.

This colloquium sets out to explore the potential contribution of innovative research methods to applied linguistics. It aims to combine an introduction to specific examples of innovative approaches and what they can offer to our field with a broader consideration of the opportunities presented by recent developments.

Topics and participants will be:

• Multimodal analysis (Paul Seedhouse and Dawn Knight, University of Newcastle)

• Mixed methods (Mehdi Riazi and Chris Candlin, Macquarie University)

• Historiography (Richard Smith, University of Warwick)

• Documentary Linguistics (Peter Austin and Julia Sallabank, SOAS, University of London)

• Putting together an innovative project (Tim Grant, Aston University)

The colloquium will begin with a brief introduction by the convenors (Seongsook Choi and Keith Richards), followed by the presentation of papers. There will be 40-45 minutes at the end for questions and a discussion of issues raised by the papers.