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

RAE

Strategy

In 2001, the output of three members of staff in Linguistics (Beeching, Daller and Treffers-Daller) was submitted under European Studies. The 2001 RAE acknowledged linguistic research to be on a firm footing. The feedback mentions Linguistics as one of two areas in which "some evidence for international excellence" was found in the submission, and the University subsequently elected to develop its capability in this area. The changes led in the direction of greater autonomy for Linguistics as a field within the School of Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, to the strategy of increasing the number of staff actively participating in research through joint work, to the expansion of the staff described above, to crystallizing the areas listed below as the main research business for the future, and to submission under UoA 58 in this RAE.

There can be no doubt that the overall strategic approach has been successful, a perception corroborated by the University’s decision to strengthen the Linguistics team through the appointment of three new members of staff in Linguistics and the recent establishment of the Bristol Centre for Linguistics. The Centre has been set up in recognition of the success of earlier research initiatives at UWE. Its role is to continue developing these successful strands, and to widen the research base in a coherent way. The Centre’s work has a sharp empirical focus using corpus-based, quantitative, fieldwork and archival methodologies, whilst focusing principally on five key areas:  (1) meaning in the broadest sense: semantics, pragmatics, lexicology, etymology and historical onomastics; (2) rhetoric, narrative and stylistics; (3) language contact, variation and change; (4) second language acquisition, learner language (esp. lexis) and testing, and (5) language description and typology. The BCL aims to promote linguistics both by developing the research culture within UWE and reaching out in collaborative endeavours with regional and international partners. Over the next five years (2008-2012) the BCL aims to bring together established researchers with convergent research interests, to offer mutual support and to seek potential for overlap, integration and development of those interests (a) through collaboration and (b) by attracting research students and academic visitors to a body with a clear identity; and thereby to form a viable and mutually supporting research community. Specific forward plans (related to the five key areas above), include:

1.Survey of English Place-Names

Coates, whose research focuses on historical semantics (1) and language contact and change (3) among the five key areas, is engaged in long-term archivally-based work on the Hampshire section of the Survey of English Place-Names, and will continue to be actively involved in philological work on the place-names of the British Isles. He is currently developing a Scandinavian strand which will be reflected mainly in work accepted for publication but due to appear post-RAE. He will also pursue an interest in the history of English surnames, seeking external funding for a project under development. These activities will feed into theoretical work of the type begun in his article in Language 82 (2006); he is guest editor of an issue of Onoma devoted to name theory (dateline 2006 but also appearing post-RAE). His activities as a member of the Terminology and Bibliography Groups of ICOS, developing international research resources, will continue, as will work on the form and meaning of lexical elements used in insular place-names.

2.Metaphor and Rhetorics

Charteris-Black’s research fits within the areas of corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis, semantics and pragmatic approaches to metaphor, i.e. (1) and (3) among BCL's key areas. His future research will continue both the theoretical and applied development of Critical Metaphor Analysis. There are two major strands to his future plans. The first involves exploring gender differences in the language of male and female politicians. Since his second and third monographs were largely concerned with male politicians, he is now developing a corpus of female politicians’ language to examine its rhetorical and persuasive characteristics. He anticipates submission of a grant proposal in this area and has had accepted two further post RAE 2007 publications in metaphor analysis and political communication.
    

The other main strand is an inter-disciplinary ESRC-funded joint linguistics and sociology research project into the relationship between gender, language and illness narratives. Two co-authored papers in the area of illness experience, gender and language have been accepted by leading journals for publication after the RAE (and two further papers have been submitted for review). He is currently planning a co-authored monograph, Gender, Language and Illness Experience. The inter-disciplinary focus of his research (linguistics – in particular corpus analysis and pragmatics - political science and sociology) has led to an invitation to give a plenary lecture at the Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines conference in 2008.

3. Procedural Meaning in Diachrony
Beeching's research interests in semantics (1) and language change (3) have led to her being invited to join an international network of researchers (comprising Detges, Munich; Eckhardt, Göttingen; Hansen, Manchester; Pusch, Freiburg; Waltereit, Newcastle) working on the impact of communication on language structure. Leverhulme funding is being sought to mount seminars, with a view to extending ground-breaking work in this area. The proposed network has two main objectives: to discover characteristic respective pathways of diachronic change for grammatical morphemes and pragmatic particles in European languages; and to investigate whether there are characteristic scenarios of language contact involved in semantic change in European languages. At least one of the network’s seminars will be held at UWE. Beeching was invited to join a colloquium on “Diachronic semantics and pragmatics” at the 18th. International Conference of Historical Linguistics (Montreal, August 2007), at which all members of the network were present. A publication is planned on this theme, to be published in “Studies in Pragmatics”. Beeching is also involved in the organisation of the IPRA (2011).

4. Sociolinguistic Variation in Contemporary French.
Beeching is the principal editor of a volume of this name (key area 3), along with co-editors Treffers-Daller and other eminent international figures in this field:  Nigel Armstrong (Leeds), Françoise Gadet (Paris X-Nanterre) and Raymond Mougeon (York University, Canada). The contract has been signed for the volume to be published by Benjamins in their “Impact” series, with a submission deadline of January 2008. Most chapters are now in and refereeing is in process. The volume will be published in 2008/09. Further plans in this area include Beeching's preparations for a third seminar on Les français des corpus in (2010).

5. Vocabulary Acquisition, Knowledge and Use
Key area (4) is developed in the output of the UWE-led ESRC seminar series on Vocabulary acquisition, knowledge and use. Treffers-Daller and Daller, with other members of the M4 Applied Linguistics Group, will edit a special issue of the Journal of French Language Studies to appear in 2008, two volumes with Palgrave, and a special issue of the Language Learning Journal (Association for Language Learning). The latter is conceptualized in cooperation with the teaching profession to ensure knowledge exchange in the area. The team are also bidding to host the annual conference of the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) in 2011.

6. Language Contact and Bilingualism
Sakel has a collaborative research grant application in key area (3) under review, the result of which is expected in January 2008. The application is under the Bilateral Agreement between the ESRC and the Austrian Research Council FWF and is for a cross-disciplinary project in collaboration with the geographer Dr Martina Neuburger (Innsbruck). The study will focus on the contact between migrants from the Andean highlands and native Mosetenes living in the foothills of the Bolivian Andes, studying the conflicts of land, resources, and power in relation to the language contact situation.
Future plans include preparation of a bid to ESRC or AHRC for a project into language contact among immigrants in Bristol (led by Sakel), which will also involve knowledge transfer and collaboration with local schools, immigrant groups, and councils. Together with an interdisciplinary research team across Europe, Daller, Sakel and Treffers-Daller are preparing a bid to the ESF research network scheme (2008-2011) on Language Contact and Institutional Communication of European Immigrants and a bid to host a BAAL/CUP seminar on crosslinguistic influence in L2 acquisition, language contact and speech processing, to be held at UWE in 2008.

7. Typological studies, morphosyntax and fieldwork
Sakel continues to work on the morphosyntax of Mosetén and Pirahã, in particular the semantics of complex predicates in Mosetén for which further collaboration with researchers at the University of Manchester has been established; and the question of recursion in Pirahã, notably the possibility that recursive structures could be borrowed into Pirahã through acquiring other languages ((1), (3) and (5) among BCL's key research areas). Sakel will carry out further collaboration on Pirahã with other scholars in the UK, the US and Germany. Sakel will furthermore continue her work on the typology of language contact situations, following the recently co-edited Mouton volume. Guirardello-Damian's research strengthens BCL's focus on typology, semantics and language contact through her work on the morphosyntax of Trumai and other indigenous languages of the Amazon, including work on the expression of posture-verbs (semantic classes), and contact with other indigenous languages.