The Bristol Centre for Linguistics at the University of the West of England

RAE

Structure

The Linguistics staff in the submission form a cohesive unit in the Department of Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies [LLAS], in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, which is one three Schools in the School of Social Science and Humanities. The School strongly supports the development of research in a range of ways, for example by offering leave to research-active staff on the basis of a three-year rota, and all staff mentioned in this submission have benefited from this scheme (except those who were appointed recently). The School also has a generous conference budget, which allows researchers to give papers at national and international conferences. 

The library has an expanding range of journals relevant to the research interests of the Linguistics team, and the budget is spent on purchasing books, databases, subscriptions to corpora, and other materials needed for researchers. The IT provision for individual staff is fully supportive of research, and staff receive updates on hardware and software as needed for research purposes.
The Bristol Centre for Linguistics (BCL), directed by Coates, was established in mid-2007 as the coordinating body for, and visible expression of, research at UWE. It developed out of the International Corpus Linguistics Unit (ICLRU), led by Beeching, which played a pivotal role in developing a high-quality, stimulating research environment. ICLRU continues as the organizational unit for corpus-based projects within the Centre. Members of the Centre are also involved in personal projects and other collaborative work which is detailed below. This work is reported at BCL seminars. The Centre has external collaboration within its remit: other research groups with members in the Centre are the M4 Applied Linguistics group, an established research group of applied linguists located along the M4 motorway, consisting of Paul Meara and Jim Milton from Applied Linguistics (Swansea), Daller and Treffers-Daller from UWE, and David Malvern and Brian Richards from Education (Reading). The group co-organised the ESRC seminar series on vocabulary from 2006-2007 (principal applicant Treffers-Daller). Swansea and UWE also jointly organise Winterschools at UWE for postgraduates working on vocabulary and language testing (since January 2005). The Turkish Language and Immigration Project (TULIP), led by Daller, focuses on the analysis of Turkish as spoken by migrants (immigrants and returnees) of different age groups. Researchers from Bogaziçi University (Özsoy), Marmara University (Yildiz), Koç University (Furman) and Nijmegen University (Van Hout) are involved as well as Treffers-Daller (see Daller output 2 and Treffers-Daller output 1).

With the aim of fostering an inclusive research culture, members of BCL (Beeching, Daller and Treffers-Daller) work together with emerging researchers in the UWE Learner Language Project, which started in 2002. Its aim is to monitor student progress in second language learning (English, French and Spanish), with a particular focus on lexical development, through the collection, transcription and analysis of a corpus of oral language, and language tests. The results of this project, which include the work of Lewis, Phelan and Tidball, emerging researchers at UWE, were presented at the UWE-led ESRC seminar series, and at the annual meetings of the Association for French Language Studies, British Association of Applied Linguistics and the American Assocation of Applied Linguistics in Montreal. Phelan and Tidball’s output is also included in the CUP volume (see Daller output 1 and Treffers-Daller output 4).

The BCL is also the organizational unit which will develop grant applications, foster internal and external collaborations, organize seminars and workshops, host conferences, assist in disseminating progress reports and completed research, and publicize UWE Linguistics both nationally and locally (with a view to encouraging knowledge exchange).  A large bid to AHRC by Coates and Hanks is pending.

All researchers in this submission have extensive international research networks in Europe and North America and some staff also work with colleagues in Asia (Charteris-Black) and South America (Sakel). Coates participates, as Director of the Survey of English Place-Names and as Secretary of ICOS, in active collaborative networks. The team has in the review period organised three large-scale conferences in Bristol: the 3rd International Symposium on Bilingualism in 2001 (with 330 participants, Treffers-Daller), the Annual meeting of Association for French Language Studies in 2006 (Beeching) and the Child Language Seminar in 2004 (Larrañaga, category B), with over 100 participants each. In addition members of the team hosted a large number of workshops and seminars at UWE. Beeching organised Les français des corpus in 2002 and 2007; Politeness and Business Communication 2003; Corpora in Translation 2004; Computer-Assisted Tools in Translation in 2004 and 2007. Daller and Treffers-Daller organised a BAAL/CUP seminar in 2004 and two meetings of the ESRC seminar series on Vocabulary at UWE in 2006 and 2007, as well a large number of thematic panels and symposia on language contact, bilingualism and vocabulary use at the Sociolinguistics Symposium in Ghent in 2002 and Limerick in 2006, at the Bilingualism Symposium in Arizona 2003, Barcelona 2005 and Hamburg in 2007. Sakel co-ordinated an international workshop on language contact in Manchester in 2005.

As UWE is committed to knowledge exchange with industry and commerce, for mutual benefit, members of the BCL have been actively engaged in developing this agenda, for example on the MA in European Business [MAEB], of which Daller is the Award Leader. The MAEB has been awarded the “Language for Export” Prize by the National Centre for Languages (CILT) and the Department for Trade and Industry in 2003 and 2005 in recognition of its role for knowledge exchange and the promotion of languages in business.  An integral part of this programme is a consultancy project carried out by the students on behalf of regional businesses. This project is carried out in co-operation with staff members from Business West (Business Link West and the Chamber of Commerce). 

The MA in Translation (Award Leader Beeching) has links with professional bodies such as the Institute of Linguists, the Institute of Translators and Interpreters through its regional group, with translation agencies such as Aquent and translation software developers such as Trados. The Computer-assisted Tools Weekend Workshops (see above) provided a forum for fruitful interchange.