The Second Sinclair Open Lecture

Supported by sponsorship from CfBT

Language and Creativity: the evidence from spoken English

Professor Ronald Carter (University of Nottingham)

9 May 2002

Professor Ronald Carter FRSA is a leading authority in many aspects of English language studies, including literary-Iinguistic studies, language and education, applied linguistics, and the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. He is a prolific writer and editor and has worked on six major linguistics series, including the  Describing English Language series co-edited with John Sinclair. His books, popular with students, teachers, and fellow academics, include:

• Exploring Grammar in Context (2000, with R. Hughes and M. McCarthy)
• Exploring Spoken English ( 1997, with M.McCarthy);
• The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland (1997, with J. McRae)
• Investigating English Discourse (1997)
• Seeing Through Language (1990, with W. Nash)
• Vocabulary: Applied Linguistic Perspectives (1987/1998)
• Language. Discourse and Literature (1989, with P. Simpson)
• The Web of Words (1987)
• Literary Text and Language Study (1982)

Ronald Carter is Professor of Modern English Language at the University of Nottingham, where he has been Head of the Department of English Studies and Director of the Centre for English Language Education. From 1989-1992 he was director of the Language in the National Curriculum (LINC) project, and he has advised more than thirty governments worldwide on English language education. In 1993 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. Currently he is Director (with M. McCarthy) of the CANCODE project: a multi-million word corpus-based analysis of contemporary spoken English, which focuses particularly on grammar.

Professor Carter has a close connection with the University of Birmingham, having been awarded his MA here in 1974 and his PhD in 1979. We are delighted to welcome him to give the second Sinclair Open Lecture.

Summer Term 2002

• Peter White, Modeling the semantics of intersubjective stance: some steps towards a modal grammar of English
• Nigel Harwood (Canterbury Christ Church University College), Demystifying an Institutional Practice: Corpus-Based Critical Pragmatism & the Teaching of Academic Writing [3 approaches to the teaching of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) are identified, the Critical approach, the Pragmatic approach, and the Critical Pragmatic approach. Critical EAP is appealing pedagogically because of its restive questioning of discourse norms, although it can seem reactionary at times. By focusing on the acquisition of the same dominant norms, Pragmatic EAP has a clear goal, but it often fails to acknowledge difference in community practices. Critical Pragmatism fuses Critical EAP's focus on difference in the academy with Pragmatic EAP's focus on access to the academy. The Critical Pragmatic approach is illustrated by activities for postgraduate and research students which centre on the use of personal pronouns.]
• Almut Koester, Pursuing Relational Goals in Office Discourse
• Dave Willis, Learning processes teaching strategies

English Literature Research Spring Term 2002

• Jerome McGann
• John Sutherland (University College London), Biography: Literary Criticism's Orphan Form

English Language Research Seminars Spring Term 2002

• David Crystal, The future of Englishes
• Tim Murphey (Yuan Ze University), Vygotsky and Learner Autonomy
• Chris Brumfit (University of Southampton), Culture, policy, and educational responses to English as an International Language
• Norman Fairclough (University of Lancaster), New Capitalism: a critical discourse analysis approach
• Sue Wright (University of Aston), English as a lingua franca for the European Union?
• Anthea Gupta (University of Leeds), Standard English and New Englishes
• Adrian Holliday (Christ Church College, Canterbury), Arguments in the discourse of English as an International Language
• Theo van Leeuwen and Adam Jakorwski (University of Cardiff), A report on the Leverhulme Project on English as a Global Language’ and ‘Representations of international tourism in the British media’
• Brigitta Mittmann (University of Augsburg), Comparing a corpus of British and American English
• John Joseph (University of Edinburgh), Linguistic identities and English as a Global Language

The English Language Postgraduate Conference 2001

The 4th University of Birmingham English Language Research Postgraduate (BELP) Conference.

Monday, 24 September, 2001 at Westmere

Head of Conference Organising Committee: Passapong Sripicharn.

• Passapong (Tony) Sripicharn     Welcome and introduction
• Session 1: APPLICATIONS OF CORPUS DATA (Chair: Ramona Tang)
• Passapong Sripicharn, Data-driven Learning in a hostile environment: a modified DDL for Thai students
• Xiaotian Guo, Learner English: A Study of Patterns
• Jinseung Eu, Frame semantics and new bilingual dictionary
• Maggie Charles, The role of introductory it patterns in two corpora of theses
• Session 2: LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL REPRESENTATION (Chair: Passapong Sripicharn)
• Alexanne Don, An Introduction to Gregory Bateson's Theories of Communication
• Ramona Tang, Writing as social behaviour: Exploring the 'interpersonal' in written academic discourse
• Elfriede Lenz, Ideology in language related to migration towards Europe
• Sue Blackwell, Personal Pronouns in Parliamentary Politics
• Amada Murphy 
• APPROACHES TO WRITTEN AND SPOKEN TEXT ANALYSIS (Chair: A. Don)
• Andrew Shanks, A linguistic study of information-giving in 30 doctor-patient consultations
• Dimitra Koutsantoni, Tentative and emphatic language in published academic communication: a cross-cultural comparison of Research Articles byGreek and Anglo-American Engineers
• Hazel Sales, Text Analysis - choosing the right path
• Jess J. Shapero, Processes in Suicide Notes
• LANGUAGE IN THE JUDICIAL PROCESS (Chair: Passapong Sripicharn)
• Alison Johnson, So...?: pragmatic implications of so-prefaced questions in formal police interviews
• Frances Rock, 'Whose line is it anyway': transformations in witness statement-taking
• Chris Heffer, Judge Directs Jury: A Brief Tale of Knowledge, Belief, Comprehension and Misrepresentation
• Malcolm Coulthard: ELR 2001-2002
• Tim Johns, Valedictory seminar: Beyond the text
• Tony Dudley-Evans, Valedictory seminar: Looking Back
• Post-conference dinner (self-sponsored!)

English Literature Research Seminars Autumn 2001

• Clare Lees (King's College, London), The Location of Anglo-Saxon Culture
• Constance Naden Room (103) Carol Rutter (University of Warwick), Beginning at the Beginning: Shakespeare's Openings

English Language Research Seminars Autumn 2001

• Geoffrey Leech (University of Lancaster): Task-oriented service dialogues and the possibilities of human-machine interaction
• Wolfgang Teubert, Making sense of meaning
• Kurshid Ahmed (University of Surrey): Hunters, Dreamers, Quarks and Jaguars: Science and the (de-)construction of nature [Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont’s passionate documentation of “postmodern philosophers’ abuse of science” includes a suggestion that there is a pattern in “humanities and social sciences” where “vacuity and banality are carefully hidden behind deliberately obscure prose’. These post-modern evangelists add parenthetically that “many articles in physics and mathematics” use unnecessarily complicated language as well. The profusion of lax and transient terminology is the bane of many a lexicographer and translator. ‘Writing science’ involves an incredible, versatile, and frequently obfuscating, use of language. Meanings of established words are frequently replaced by their antonyms; multi-word compounds bubble through pure sciences as diverse as nuclear physics and linguistics; word-play is the order of the day in enterprises as diverse as neurobiology, semiconductor physics and sewer engineering. I will attempt to suggest how methods and techniques for studying language, especially corpus linguistics, can be used as a starting point for examining texts written by scientists. This examination may help to celebrate the work of scientists and equally will help to criticise their excesses, linguistic or otherwise.]
• Chris Gledhill (University of St Andrews): Just how grammatical are grammatical items? A preliminary study on pattern grammar in languages for specific purposes
• Alison Wray (University of Cardiff): If linguistic intuition is so unreliable, what’s it for?
• Charles Owen, Corpus evidence and the person on the Clapham Omnibus
• Susan Hunston, How far can you go? Lexis as the basis for grammatical choice
• Alison Piper (University of Southampton): Agency, rationality, consumption and risk: Late-modern constructions of 'people' and 'individuals' in the Labour government's early policies for lifelong learning.
• Chris Kennedy, When language is mentioned, I am all ears' - investigating advanced writing skills using a learner corpus of examination scripts

Research Methods Seminars: Autumn Term 2001

• Michael Toolan. Research in Stylistics.
• Peter White. Getting Interpersonal: the grammar of social roles and relationships.
• Rosamund Moon. Idioms and Evidence.
• Malcolm Coulthard. forensics.
• Charles Owen. statistics.
• Sue Blackwell. Children's use of pronouns and the more general problem of collecting data.
• Richard Cauldwell. intonation and poetry.
• Oliver Mason. Cluster Analysis.
• Philip King. parallel concordancing.

Student Seminars: Autumn 2001

• Anne Marie Smith. useful computer strategies.
• Alexanne Don. Participant processes and the representation of social actors: an analysis of two texts from an email discussion list.
• Susanne Handl. collocations.
• Terry Shortall
• Stephen Thorne
• Andy Shanks. Differences between GP and Accident and Emergency consultations.
• Suganthi John. What motivates research methodologies in Discourse Analysis.
• Nick Tsatstakos
• Hazel Sales. use of NUDISTNVIVO to devise analytical categories and analyse texts.