Research

  • The Linguistics Research Group comprises researchers within the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, who investigate the relationship between language and the social world.

    The Research Group is closely linked to the Language and Society Centre.

    Areas of research and supervisory expertise include:

    • Austronesian languages and cultures (Indonesia and Oceania)
    • Cross-linguistic analysis of narratives
    • Cultural and linguistic aspects of interpreted medical discourse
    • Documentation and analysis of endangered and other under-described languages
    • Language variation and change
    • Migration, language minorities and language contact
    • Intercultural communication
    • Language and culture
    • Multilingualism and bilingualism
    • e-Learning
    • Computer mediated communication
    • Language policy, planning, and language teaching
    • Second language acquisition and use
    • Communication in professional contexts

  • Past and present HDR topics in Linguistics
    Linguistics Completed Name Title Supervisor Margaret A’beckett PhD Gender assignment and word-final pronunciation in French: two classification systems Dr Heather Bowe Andrew Balint PhD Utterance and discourse in context: a process model of the architectural and operational Gestalt of interlocutory language usage Prof Keith Allan Zhiqun Chen PhD Compound ideograph: a contested category in studies of the Chinese writing system Prof Keith Allan Carmen Dawuda PhD Discourse functions of demonstratives and place adverbs with ... Read more
  • Austronesian languages and cultures (Indonesia and Oceania)
    Several researchers are working in the area of Austronesian language and culture. Yacinta Kurniasih has been working in the area of language policy and its implementation at schools in Indonesia and the community attitudes toward policy. She is currently finishing her PhD on Javanese (regional/indigenous) language teaching policy in The Special District of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She has ... Read more
  • Cross-linguistic analysis of narratives
    We are currently establishing a new research group initiative on the cross-linguistic analysis of narratives. In the first phase the group will focus on topics including the function of quotatives, marking of narrative peaks and non-prototypical uses of pronouns in narratives. We will draw mostly on transcribed oral but also on written data from a ... Read more
  • Cultural and linguistic aspects of interpreted medical discourse
    The research group has expertise in the area of medical discourse, interpreting and discourse analysis. Marisa Cordella has been studying doctor-patient communication across cultures using discourse analysis methods. She has investigated primary care physicians, oncologists as well as international medical graduates interacting with a diverse patient population. Julie Bradshaw Simon Musgrave Helen Tebble Louisa Willoughby Read more
  • Documentation and analysis of endangered and other under-described languages
    Several members of the research group are working in the area of documentation, description and analysis of endangered languages and more generally under-described languages, in particular Aboriginal languages of Australia, Austronesian languages and Germanic languages. Alice Gaby’s field interests lie primarily in Cape York Peninsula, where she has worked with the Pormpuraaw Aboriginal Community since 2002. During this ... Read more
  • Language variation and change
    Several members of the linguistics research group have expertise in the area of language variation and change, encompassing phonological change, syntactic change, grammaticalization (creation of grammar), lexical and semantic change, prehistory, areal linguistics, linguistic reconstruction, as well as linguistic prescriptivism and purism. Kate Burridge continues earlier PhD research that focused on the historical development of Dutch. More ... Read more
  • Migration, language minorities and language contact
    The linguistics research group has expertise in the area of sociolinguistics, bilingualism and multilingualism, language contact, and language maintenance and loss. Julie Bradshaw has worked with migrant communities and statistical data, to explore language maintenance and change in Australia. She is also interested in cultural factors, gender and the role of school-based language programs in language maintenance. Louisa ... Read more
  • Research Group Members
    John Bradley Julie Bradshaw In Jung Cho Young-a Cho Marisa Cordella Carmen Dawuda Patrick Durel Alice Gaby Scott Grant Hiroko Hashimoto Jim Hlavac Hui Huang Lijian Hong Shimako Iwasaki Heinz Kreutz Yacinta Kurniasih Naomi Kurata Raffaele Lampugnani Howie Manns Anna Margetts Helen Mariott Simon Musgrave Nadine Normand-Marconnet Marc Orlando Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou Farzad Sharifian Robyn Spence-Brown Masato Takimoto Helen Tebble Louisa Willoughby Zhichang (Marc) Xu Kuniko Yoshimitsu Read more