Applied Linguistics
Members of the Linguistics & English Language subject area within the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures are involved in a variety of activities with a concrete application of linguistic research methods.
Mr Martin Barry is actively involved in consultancy in forensic analysis of speech samples. This involvement has usually taken the form of service as an expert witness for one side or other in criminal cases, and occasionally at the investigative stage rather than in connection with a trial. His work on major criminal cases includes the unsolved Furneux Pelham murder enquiry of 2004 (recently in the news again).
This field of activity has relatively few practitioners in the UK (around six or eight active in total.) Mr Barry's view is that the field is to some extent dependent on scientific techniques whose efficacy has not been proven, and on subjective assertions of expertise rather than explicit presentation of facts. He maintains that an appropriate and responsible way of engaging with this unsatisfactory situation takes the form of active involvement, with the aim of injecting a note of 'peer review' and of scientific rigour into the field.
Part of our MA course unit on Readings in Applied Linguistics is taught by Mr Barry and has as its subject matter the broad topic of forensic phonetics: whether there can be such science; what knowledge and techniques can be brought to bear in this domain; and what it is about the human voice that means that what can be done here is always likely to be limited.
For more information on this field of applied linguistic activitity consult the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA).
Machine-processing of language and computational linguistics is a further area with wide applications. Dr Paul Bennett is responsible for the development of an on-line course in Perl programming for text processing, and is currently beginning work on developing a Corpus of earlier stages of German, with an ESRC grant, in cooperation with Martin Durrell and Astrid Ensslin. He is also the author of a textbook on semantics: Semantics: an Introduction to Non-Lexical Aspects of Meaning, Lincom Europa 2002. Professor Harold Somers works on such areas as Language Engineering (assistive technologies in healthcare provision, resources for minority languages), Machine Translation, and language analysis by speech therapists.
Many of our colleagues are actively involved in raising language awareness, including awareness of language norms and language history.
The late Professor Richard Hogg, whose principal interests were in the field of English Historical Linguistics, had in recent times renewed an earlier interest in the history of prescriptivism and the history of ideas as well as the history of the English grammatical tradition. Together with Professor David Denison he has recently published a textbook on the History of the English Language. Dr Nuria Yáñez-Bouza has recently completed a study of eighteenth-century prescriptivism.
Professor Kersti Börjars co-authored a basic textbook introducing terminology and argumentation for morpho-syntax based on English; nearly all example sentences are taken from the magazine for and partly by homeless people, The Big Issue. (Kersti Börjars and Kate Burridge 2001 Introducing English Grammar. Edward Arnold.) She is also responsible for the ongoing development of the Children's University of Manchester, which provides a link between University teaching and research, and support for Key Stage 2 learning. The Children's University includes information on languages of the world.
Professor David Denison has acted as consultant to a law firm in a trademark dispute between Tesco and Asda on the use of the term rollback. He was also involved in persuading the Department for Education and Employment to include some linguistically sound information in the material offered to teachers for the primary school literacy campaign in the 1990s.
Linguists have a special role to play in promoting smaller languages. Dr Beth Evans worked on a community-based language project for Diwurruwurru-jaru Aboriginal Corporation (Katherine Regional Aboriginal Language Centre) and the Wardaman Aboriginal Corporation in Australia. Together with some of the Wardaman people living in and around Katherine (Northern Territory, Australia), she worked on producing materials in the Wardaman language including an alphabet book, children's talking books (i.e. a picture book and accompanying audio cassette) and videos of traditional and everyday activities with Wardaman narratives and subtitles.
Professor Yaron Matras has studied aspects of codification in Romani (a stateless, non-territorial language which is no one of the largest minority languages in the European Union). He consults various non-governmental organisations on the choice of dialect and writing system in Romani-language publications, and is a member of the Council of Europe group of experts attempting to harmonise Romani language teaching materials across Europe. He heads a research team that operate the Romani Linguistics Page, a comprehensive web resource aimed at disseminating information and data on this language.
Within the School of Education, most of the work that can be seen as Applied Linguistics in nature is located within the Language Teacher Education group, which specialises in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Educational Technology & TESOL. The range of interests that LTE colleagues are involved in is well-represented by the course units offered on the Masters programmes in TESOL and Educational & TESOL from which MA Applied Linguistics students can choose half of their course units. In addition, it may be useful to point out the following areas of interest:
* Dr Julian Edge has an interest in the analysis of written discourse using the model originally devised by Eugene Winter and further elaborated by Michael Hoey. Winter called it 'clause-relational analysis,' Hoey more simply 'relational analysis.' Julian's particular interest is in the use of this model for awareness-raising purposes in the teaching of professional/academic reading and writing in TESOL. Julian also has an interest in spoken discourse inside a framework of non-judgemental interaction devised to further cooperative development among teachers. This is less obviously 'applied linguistics' in the sense of using a linguistic description for pedagogic purposes; it is rather a case of defining what is interactionally permissable and then acquiring the language to take part in that interaction. Once again, however, there are issues of awareness-raising involved that require a certain amount of linguistic sophistication.
* Dr Juup Stelma who has strong interest in metaphor analysis with an increasing concern for how such analyses can be applied to educational discourses such as lectures.
* Dr Steven Jones focuses in his research on the meaning(s) of words and phrases, and the methodologies he prefers usually involve a corpus-based approach. Antonyms have always been a favourite case study of his (Jones 2002, 2005, 2006) and he has examined and classified their discourse functions in all kinds of English (spoken and written, adults' and children's, etc.). Other areas of semantics/lexicology that he has researched are phraseology, polysemy and synonymy. He is particularly interested in how the lexico-grammatical environment of a word can affect its meaning. Though his research is not specifically aimed at learners, it does contribute towards a better understanding of how the English Language operates and, as such, has ramifications for current and future TESOL practices.
* Dr Laura Black's research focuses on classroom talk and learning and how teachers and pupils construct knowledge together. This involves discursive analysis of the function of teachers' and students' communicative behaviour within classroom discussions. In particular, Laura's research interests can be seen to focus on:
- The characteristics of productive and non-productive talk in terms of children's learning
- Pupil learning strategies and how they are developed through classroom talk
- The use of ethnography in observing and analysing classroom talk in its social context
- Social and cultural differences in children's thinking and speech comprehension
Further information can be found on http://www.lte.education.manchester.ac.uk/
For more details about any of the above areas of interest and activity, please contact Richard.fay@manchester.ac.uk