New look to our MAESP notice board in the Department

A fresh start for 2021! We have also given a new look to our MAESP notice board in the Department! Inspired by the Salvation Mountain, a student from the PolyU School of Design produced this stunning piece of artwork. The “programme streams” represent the joyfulness and richness our Master of Arts in English Studies for the Profession programme is endowed with. The Spring colour tone delivers warmth and hope, and makes our students feel like home! Click here for further information about MA in English Studies for the Professions.

Replay: Analysing university spoken interaction: a CL/CA approach by Prof. Steve Walsh

How to use Corpus Linguistics (CL) and Conversation Analysis (CA) to analyse classroom spoken interactions in highered setting? This is a replay of the webinar took place on 30 Nov 2020 with Prof. Steve Walsh as the speaker. He is Professor of Applied Linguistics, Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle University, UK. From an analysis of the data, he shows how the two approaches can be combined in an iterative process to account for features of spoken discourse at both micro (word) and macro (text) levels. Abstract:  In this talk I consider how corpus linguistics (CL) and conversation analysis (CA)  can be used together to provide ‘thick descriptions’ of spoken interaction in the context of small group teaching in higher education. From an analysis of the data, I show how the two approaches can be combined in an iterative process to account for features of spoken discourse at both micro (word) and macro (text) levels. Beginning with CL and focusing largely on words and combinations of words, CA is then used to highlight pertinent interactional features. This methodology follows an iterative process: from CL to CA, back to CL and so on. This approach to analysis provides powerful insights into the ways in which interactants establish understandings in educational settings and, in particular, highlights the inter-dependency of words, utterances and text in the co-construction of meaning. While CA and CL have both been used on their own to study spoken encounters, each has its limitations. CL, for example, largely ignores context and focuses on large scale analysis, whereas CA offers detailed descriptions but is unable to generalize to larger contexts. Using a combined CL and CA approach (henceforth, CLCA), I argue, cumulatively gives a more ‘up-close’ description of spoken interactions in an educational setting than that offered by using either one on its own.

Good and Bad Reasoning about COVID-19

In her newly-published paper "Good and Bad Reasoning about COVID-19" in Informal Logic, our Prof. Louise Cummings discussed instances of good and bad reasoning observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prof. Cummings examined errors in reasoning in which people, agencies, and governments respond to the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2. Their responses have revealed a range of judgements and decisions, not all of which are rationally warranted, and several of which have reduced the public's compliance with important health measures. She also analysed the rationally warranted reasoning about COVID-19 employed by public health agencies. Click here to read the full article.

Online Workshop Replay: Solving Crime Through Linguistics

How good is your detective skill? In this 40-minutes workshop, our Dr Phoenix Lam introduced us to authorship studies - an area of linguistics, and how authorship studies can help to solve crime in authentic settings.

Replay: Analysing Professional Discourse from a Multimodal Perspective by Dr William Feng

What are the new semiotic possibilities brought by technologies? This is a replay of the webinar took place on 23 Nov 2020 with our Dr William Feng, Associate Professor of the Department as the speaker. He discussed the functions of multimodal resources in knowledge construction and corporate promotion. Check it out if you have missed it! Abstract: As discourse and communication in various professional contexts have become increasingly multimodal, it is important for analysts to look at semiotic resources beyond language. A multimodal approach is therefore needed for understanding how meaning is realised through the deployment of different semiotic resources. In this talk, I will introduce how theories in multimodality can contribute to the analysis of professional discourse, addressing the question “what happens when professional communication moves online?” in particular. Working broadly with the notion of multimodal genre analysis, I will examine two key features of professional discourse on new media, namely, the complexity of communicative purposes and the extensive use of multimodal resources. Using two cases studies of YouTube teaching videos and corporate social media posts, I will discuss the functions of multimodal resources in knowledge construction and corporate promotion, which contribute to the formation of new digital genres. I conclude that professionals and scholars need to understand the new semiotic possibilities brought about by technologies and how multimodal resources are orchestrated for achieving various purposes in digitalised professional communication. This online seminar was jointly organised by the Department of English and Research Centre for Professional Communication in English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Congrats to our 2018 PhD graduate Dr Esterina Nervino!

Congrats to our 2018 PhD graduate Dr Esterina Nervino for being re-elected as Chairman of the Retail Committee of The Italian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong and Macao for another two years! Dr Nervino is an awardee of the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme and her research interests include luxury and art, luxury and space, luxury and CSR, country of origin effect and language use, retail experience, and intercultural communication. We are grateful to see her contributions to the industry and community she involves in! Click here for more details.

Video: Getting to know our faculty member

Our Assistant Professor Dr Anne Schluter happily shared about her working life at PolyU and our Department, “PolyU is the first place where I am really in a department full of colleagues who are supportive.” Dr Schluter has worked at universities in the US and Turkey before and she is fascinated by the multilingual environment of Hong Kong. She teaches discourse analysis and sociolinguistics in our Department. Check out the video to know what facilities at PolyU impressed her!  

The long road back: Implications of Covid-19 for language and cognition

Recovering from Covid-19 can be a long battle... In this blog of Cambridge University Press, our Prof. Louise Cummings, who is a clinical linguist, explained that new cognitive-linguistic impairment (BrainFog) was reported in people with Long Covid, and their language and cognitive skills have been adversely affected. People who are in recovery from Covid-19 report ‘brain fog’, significant memory loss, and difficulty concentrating. Some also describe having difficulty remembering the names of people and things during conversation. If these impairments become chronic in people with Long Covid, speech-language pathology and neuropsychology investigations will be required. Click here to read it now.

Replay: Emancipatory discourses in action: A feminist critical discourse analysis of Ghanaian feminist blogs

The replay of the webinar by our Dr Mark Nartey "Emancipatory discourses in action: A feminist critical discourse analysis of Ghanaian feminist blogs" is available now. Check it out if you have missed it! Abstract: Even though one of the aims of critical discourse analysis is to demonstrate how social inequality, power abuse and discriminatory practices can be resisted, most studies have centered on the deconstruction of oppression and ideologically driven discrimination rather than the (re)construction of resistance. In this talk, I address this gap by examining the blogposts of Ghanaian feminists using Lazar’s (2007, 2014) feminist critical discourse analysis as an analytic framework. Specifically, I discuss three resistance strategies utilized in the blogposts to criticize systematic gendering of privilege and inequality, and to foreground the voice and agency of Ghanaian/African women: (1) critiquing patriarchy, traditional gender norms and gender oppression, (2) resisting gender stereotypes and rewriting demeaning gender narratives, (3) calling out sexist attitudes and applauding women who resist such behavior. I argue that these strategies contribute to a feminist political critique of gendered social practices and relations aimed at effecting social emancipation and transformation. The talk ends by highlighting how the emancipatory discourse promoted by the blogs can be enhanced as part of a continuous striving for social justice for Ghanaian/African women. This online seminar was jointly organised by the Department of English and Research Centre for Professional Communication in English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Proposing a revised functional classification of pragmatic gestures

Our Dr Renia Lopez’s article "Proposing a revised functional classification of pragmatic gestures" was selected by Lingua of Elsevier as an Editors’ Choice Article! The article proposed a revision of the pragmatic functions of #gestures to simplify their classification by bringing the interactional function under the same umbrella of pragmatic functions. It's free to download until end of Feb 2021: https://bit.ly/36axS6z