Discourse analysis and stylistics

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 Research
 Corpus research
 Discourse analysis and stylistics
 Doctoral researcher profiles
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 English language teaching and applied linguistics
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Our research into genres of literary, social, academic and professional
discourse draws on a variety of linguistic and theoretical traditions,
including: systemic-functional linguistics; critical discourse analysis;
corpus linguistics; multimodal analysis; narrative analysis; conversation
analysis, and genre analysis.

Much of our work contributes to a revisionary grammar (grammar broadly

conceived) of texts and genres.  Prominent interests are the kinds of impact
that gender, institution, and nationality have on the dominant patterns of
form and function in various kinds of discourse. We have particular
strengths in the analysis of academic, workplace and professional
discourse and its applications.

Much of our research is interdisciplinary, exploring language where it is

embedded in the media, business interactions, education, film and digital
technologies. Corpus research methods and resources are often central to
our analyses. We also have a long tradition of work in literary stylistics
(especially of prose fiction) and narratology. Dr Alison Sealey is currently
involved in a Leverhulme-funded research project investigating the ways in
which people talk and write about animals.

As well as our popular PhD programme in English Language and Applied

Linguistics, we run several Masters programmes that reflect our research
 activity in discourse and stylistic studies, particularly theMA in Critical
Discourse, Culture and Communication and the MA in Literary Linguistics.
Our campus MA in Applied Linguistics and distance MA in Applied
Linguistics programmes also feature options in spoken and written
discourse analysis.

Members of the research cluster are also supervising, in total,

approximately 30 students working on PhDs in this area. These students
are exploring a number of exciting new fields for discourse analytic and
stylistic research, including: multimodal narratives; workplace discourse;
discoursal performance of gender and identity; stylistic analysis of film; and
corpus stylistic studies of literary translation. Our particular strength at
Birmingham is that we combine discourse analysis with corpus analytic
methods of research. This is reflected in numerous ongoing projects, e.g.
our interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary work on figurative language.

Staff and their areas of expertise

 Dr Nicholas Groom Phraseological analysis of specialised
discourses; historical approaches to discourse analysis.
 Robert Holland Discourse and ideology, media discourse, and
language and intercultural communication.
 Professor Susan Hunston The study of evaluative language and the
analysis of written academic English.
 Professor Jeannette Littlemore The ways in which figurative
language use is shaped by genre and register.
 Dr Rosamund Moon Discourse and ideological aspects of language,
particularly from a lexical point of view; the representation of age and
gender.
 Dr Paul Thompson Academic discourse and uses of educational
technologies in language learning.
 Professor Michael Toolan  The language of narrative progression and
immersion, and literary creativity.