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Linguistics at Northumbria

Linguistics at Northumbria covers a very broad range of applied and theoretical areas, using a wide range of empirical techniques.

Our areas of expertise include:

  • cognitive linguistics
  • first and second language acquisition
  • forensic linguistics
  • language evolution and change
  • language in education
  • language teaching
  • language variation
  • medical communication
  • pragmatics
  • sociolinguistics
  • stylistics
  • TESOL

Our current research includes projects which focus on:

  • identity issues facing Native Speaking English Teachers living and working abroad
  • ways of supporting learners of English as a second language with low levels of literacy
  • the role of metaphor in maths education
  • the role of pragmatic inference in the production, interpretation and evaluation of texts
  • how accent and dialect diversity can be used as a resource in teaching
  • implicit and explicit attitudes to language variation
  • the historical development of yes and other positive and negative markers in English 
  • pragmatics and language change
  • the evolution of language
  • the relationship between musical perception and the perception of speech prosody
  • metaphor and time
  • critical pedagogy and language teaching
  • individual differences in language processing
  • discursive practices in Dark Web criminal activities
  • the language of police interviews

For further information on our researchers and their projects, see our staff profile pages:

For general queries about linguistics at Northumbria, contact Billy Clark:

billy.clark@northumbria.ac.uk


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The Department of Humanities offers a number of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. By studying at Northumbria you will become part of a passionate and creative community.

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Northumbria Research Link

Northumbria Research Link (NRL) is an open access repository of Northumbria University's research output.

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