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Language & Communication

This category covers:

  • Academic and Multimodal Communication
  • Communication and Culture
  • Discourse
  • Language for Specific Purposes
  • Language in Science and Technology
  • Language in the Arts and Social Sciences
 
  • Language in The Professions
  • Language Teaching and Learning
  • Professional
  • Technical
  • Technology in Language Teaching and Learning
  • Text and Genre Analysis



Related Links:
Language and Communication Centre (LCC)

NameResearch Interests
Mr Abel Perez AbadHis research interests include Sociolinguistics, Cognitive Linguistics, Sociocultural Studies, New Trends in Foreign Language Teaching and Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL)
Dr Aileen Ng Cheng ChengAileen Ng is interested in the area of Discourse Analysis and Computer Mediated Communication in English Language teaching and learning. She has researched on the use of Information and Communication Technology for teaching Communication Skills based on Socio-cultural Theory as well as analysed the discourse of pre-workplace texts such as job application letters and resumes.
Assoc Prof Alexander Robertson CoupeAlexander Coupe's major contributions to linguistic research have focused upon the languages of the South Asia/Southeast Asia region. In addition to documenting the grammars of minority and endangered languages – particularly those spoken in Northeast India – he has investigated evidence of contact and linguistic convergence between Austroasiatic, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan and Tibeto-Burman languages. This fieldwork-based research is driven by a desire to record and analyse the grammars of poorly understood minority languages, to determine their genetic relationships, to document them for posterity, and to collaborate with speakers to create orthographies for dictionaries and reading books. The output of this work feeds another research goal: to seek functional and diachronic explanations for the structural diversity and commonalities found in human language, and to advance knowledge in the field of linguistic typology. Specific areas of research interest include the analysis of tone systems, phonetics and phonology, the role of pragmatics in grammar, case-marking systems, morphosyntax, clause linkage, nominalization, grammaticalization, language contact and lexicography.
Dr Angela FrattarolaModernism, Auditory Technology, Twentieth-Century Literature, Sound Studies, Composition Theory and Pedagogy
Dr Benedict LinDr Lin research is in applied linguistics and stylistics, the application of the methods of linguistics to the analysis of literary texts. He works from the theoretical perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar, applying it to text/discourse analysis, as well as stylistics. Specifically, one area of his current research interests is the language & discourse of science, engineering & engineering education, with a focus areas on metadiscourse in journal articles and students' developmental writing. Another area is stylistics and its implications for literature education and pedagogy, especially in post-colonial contexts. His research also covers English & English Language Teaching in Southeast Asia, and he also has an interest in New Englishes and their implications for language teaching.
Assoc Prof Chan Hiu Dan AliceHer research work mainly utilizes neuroimaging (fMRI) and behavioral measures to investigate how cultural experiences such as language and socialization may shape our brains and affect the way we see and hear the world. Her studies demonstrated that the auditory perception pattern is different between members from East Asian and Western cultures, which is in connection with previous findings on visual perception. She is interested in looking at the underlying cognitive and neuroanatomical mechanisms as well as the genetic bases of these culturally sensitive perceptual patterns and behaviors. Her current work also looks at possible neurophysiological realizations that would support the Whorfian hypothesis, with a specific interest in Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, as well as bilingual and multilingual communities.
Dr Chen LiandongJapanese Grammar, morphology and syntax in Japanese language and teaching Japanese language as a second language.
Prof Chen Shen-Hsing AnnabelProf Chen has a diverse research background, including animal drug studies, human neuropsychological research and cognitive rehabilitation. She has applied Positron Emission Tomography (PET) to study individuals with post-concussion sequelae from mild traumatic brain injury and olfaction in Alzheimer’s Disease, and has been involved in functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) research examining language processing, executive functions, and affective memory in healthy and clinical populations (e.g. stroke, anxiety, schizophrenia, dementia), as well as, assessing neural systems used in motor timing/timing perception in patients with Parkinson's Disease. Her main research interests are to investigate underlying neural substrates involved in higher cognition in the cerebellum, as well as changes in cognitive processes in healthy aging and dementia through the application of neuroimaging techniques, such as fMRI, diffusion MRI,Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), and most recently electroencephalography (EEG). The goal of her research is to apply these paradigms to study and to develop neuroimaging markers in the cerebro-cerebellar circuitry for clinical groups, and to further understand the processes of neurodevelopmental (e.g. schizophrenia, dyslexia, autism) and neurodegenerative (e.g. dementia, healthy aging) conditions that would be informative to evidence-based interventions. A recent research development in her lab, the Clinical Brain lab, is focusing on the Neuroscience of Learning and Education. In particular, their lab is investigating the neurophysiological changes in aging neuroscience for learning in language, memory and executive control networks. This allows development of neuromodulation techniques to optimize and/or enhance brain functions for learning. They are also developing research in understanding the effects of emotion on cognition and self-regulation with the use of neuroimaging
Miss Cheng Ooi LanCatherine's areas of expertise are Emotional Intelligence and Multicultural Minds in Negotiation. Her current research works focus on Multicultural Minds in Inter- and Intracultural Negotiation Multicultural minds describe bicultural individuals - people who have internalized two cultures to the extent that both cultures influence their thoughts, feelings and actions in turn. Essentially, the internalized cultures are independent and the original culture is not replaced by the new. However, given the right priming, these different cultures are surfaced in the bicultural individuals separately. Which culture is surfaced is dependent on the cues such as context and symbols that are psychologically associated with one culture or another that these individuals are primed with. The process whereby bicultural individuals switch mindsets is termed frame switching. To understand frame switching, one must think of culture as not being internalized in the form of an integrated and highly general structure but as a loose network of domain-specific knowledge structure. Furthermore, individuals are seen as being able to acquire more than one cultural meaning system eventhough the system may contain contradictory or conflicting constructs. How particular pieces of cultural knowledge become operative is dependent on the accessibility of the construct. It has been a long-standing hypothesis in cognitive and social pyschology that a construct is accessible to the extent that it has been activated by recent use. Thus, if an individual is primed with iconic cultural symbols, i.e., images created or selected for their power to evoke in observers a particular frame of mind, activation of a certain network of cultural constructs would be possible. For example, if a bicultural Singaporean exposed to Singaporean icons like the Merlion, it should activate interpretative constructs in their Singaporean cultural knowledge network; exposing the same individual to American icons like a picture of Abraham Lincoln instead should activate constructs in their American cultural knowledge network. Thus, this leads us to the following research questions: Firstly, is it possible for bicultural individuals through priming and frame switching surface scripts and schemas for negotiation appropriate to the culture of the other negotiating party? Secondly, can culture priming activate culture specific behaviors? Another related question would be: which context ? intracultrual or intercultural mindframes ? provides the highest joint gains if a bicultural individual activates the appropriate scripts and schemas in the negotiation process? Finally, what mediators and moderators, if any, contribute towards the possible difference in results? Substantial research has been done on negotiation by western scholars over the past decade. In the area of cross-cultural negotation, there is extensive work on negotiations in different cultural contexts by various scholars. There is also some research on negotiations between members of different cultures or intercultural negotiation. However, work on cultural influence within individuals who have been exposed extensively to two cultures (biculturals) in a negotiation context has not been studied. Therefore, it would be of interest to determine just how the bicultural influences in a bicultural individual would interfere with the negotiation of joint gains in an intracultural and intercultural negotiation context.
Dr Christopher John HillHis present research interests focus on contemporary literature and English for Academic Purposes