From the Linguistics Postgraduate Office
A very warm welcome is extended to all our new distance and on-campus postgraduate students in Linguistics, and welcome back to all students who will shortly commence study for the second semester. If you are on-campus on 6 August, please come along to the Linguistics party (see details below). We look forward to meeting you over a few snacks and drinks.
If you wish to add unit/s to a second semester program you should use a change of program form available as a download from the web. See http://www.mq.edu.au/postgrad/PDFs/COP.pdf The deadline for adding a unit is 6 August. The deadline for withdrawing from a unit is 31 August.
Linguistics Postgraduate Student and Staff Party
All new and continuing students in Postgraduate Linguistics Courses are encouraged to attend a function welcoming new students, where you can meet staff, and where you can find out about the Linguistics Department.
Please come and join us for some drinks and light snacks from 4.00 pm to 6.00 pm in the Staff Club (Building W5A) on Friday 6 August 2004.
Enquiries can be directed to: Tessa Green - email tgreen@ling.mq.edu.au .
From the NCELTR Resource Centre 
All commencing students are advised that you can make use of the excellent services provided by the NCELTR Resource Centre which houses a specialised collection of books, journals, theses and audio-visual materials in the field of English as a second language and applied linguistics. The collection is primarily for the use of teachers in the Adult Migrant English Program, but Macquarie University staff and students are also welcome. Our services include loans from the collection, a free online database (DELTAA) which indexes all Australian material in the field, access to Journal Watch which is a compilation of the table of contents of ESL journals, assistance with online databases, document delivery and access to the departmental thesis collection. We are situated in Building W6B Room 382 and library hours are 9 am - 5 pm weekdays.
For help with your information needs, email us at rescentr@nceltr.mq.edu.au All our services are listed on the website at http://nceltr.edu.au/resources
From the Macquarie Library
The Library now has a subscription to Xreferplus, a collection of 151 online reference books, including both general and subject-specific encyclopedias and dictionaries. Subject sets include: Language, Literature, Bilinguals, Quotations, Philosophy & Psychology, Social Sciences, and Technology. A complete list of titles included can be seen at: http://www.xreferplus.com/allbooks.jsp
Access is available from the catalogue or databases list, or go to: http://www.xreferplus.com/
Some titles of interest to Linguistics are:
- A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics
- Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang
- Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable
- Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Millennium Edition
- Dictionary of Eponyms, Manser
- Rawson's Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk
- Rawson's Wicked Words
- The American Heritage? Dictionary of Idioms
- The Bloomsbury Good Word Guide
- The Browser's Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases
- The Devil's Dictionary
- The Penguin Rhyming Dictionary
- Business French Dictionary, Peter Collin Publishing
- Business German Dictionary, Peter Collin Publishing
- Business Spanish Dictionary, Peter Collin Publishing
- Collins French Dictionary
- Collins German Dictionary
- Collins Italian Dictionary
- Collins Latin Dictionary
- Collins Portuguese Dictionary
- Collins Spanish Dictionary
For Enquiries about library services relating to linguistics, please contact Maureen Kattau, Academic Outreach Librarian, Linguistics and Psychology, Macquarie University Library, e-Learning & Information Services Division, Ph: (61 2) 9850 6521, Email: mkattau@library.mq.edu.au
Linguistics Department Seminar
The next seminar will be held on 2 August at 11am in W5C 221 and will be given by visiting academic Dr. Patrick McAndrew, Head of the Centre for IT in Education at the Open University in E.Learning (UK). For further details on this seminar please click on the links below.
The Linguistics Department Seminar Series is primarily intended for research students, but staff are also warmly invited as are coursework postgraduates. The seminars are given by a mix of Department staff, invited lecturers from other fields in the University, and outside visitors to the Department.
For research students, at least two thirds attendance at the seminars in any given semester is required as part of their research training. The scope of the series is intended to provide a broader understanding of a wide range of aspects of Linguistics over the candidature of the research student and, thereby, to ensure that research students can set their own particular research projects in the context of the study of language and linguistics as a whole, and develop a wider awareness of the discipline.
For more information about the research seminars, please refer to the Seminar web page http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/programs/researchdegrees/researchseminars.htm
Click here for the schedule of the seminars.
Writing Website
The LINGPWS Linguistics Postgraduate Writing-Skills website is part of the support services and resources offered by the Linguistics Department for its on-campus and distance students.
All Linguistics students enrolled in a postgraduate unit (on-campus, external) can access the site by using their MQ ID and password which every student is given at enrolment. To logon to the website please go to: http://online.mq.edu.au/pub/LINGPWS/
In the Unit Content section of the website, Parts 1 to 5 give information and activities about different aspects of academic writing, with a particular focus on postgraduate assignments in Linguistics. There has been a concentration on questions and problem areas most often identified by Linguistics students in the preparation of their assignments, and in most cases, examples are taken from actual student assignments. In Part 6, there are answers to common questions about Linguistics assignments related to referencing, style and formatting, and organization and argumentation.
For further information, please contact Tessa Green by email mailto:tgreen@ling.mq.edu.au
Writing and Communication Skills Program
The schedule for the Writing and Communication Skills Program which is available to all on-campus Linguistics Postgraduate Students for Semester 2, 2004 will be as follows:
Session 1 - Approaching Essay Questions in Linguistics (Week 2)
Session 2 - Structuring and Planning Your Assignment (Week 3)
Session 3 - Developing & Maintaining Your Argument (Week 4)
Session 4 - Understanding Plagiarism & Referencing (Week 5)
Session 5 - Critical Reviews & other Written Assignments (Week 6)
Session 6 - Speaking and Listening Skills Seminar 1 (Weeks 9)
Session 7 - Speaking and Listening Skills Seminar 2 (Week 10)
Presentation Skills Workshop 1 (Week 2)
Presentation Skills Workshop 2 (Week 3)
Presentation Skills Workshop 3 (Week 4)
The first session commences on 10 August. For further details on how to join this program go to: http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/pg_writing_skills/on_campus.html
Division of Linguistics and Psychology Postgraduate Research Festival, December 9, 10 and 11 ? 2004, Macquarie University.
The Postgraduate research festival is a wonderful opportunity for our students to present their work in an open and friendly environment. You will meet colleagues from Psychology and Linguistics, and you may find that you share similar interests. The feedback that you receive from staff and students should prove to be invaluable.
If you are just starting out on your research you may like to use the festival to tell people what your research is all about, and the sort of things that you are likely to be doing.
For further information on the research festival and to see some abstracts from last year, visit the festival website at: http://www.psy.mq.edu.au/festival/
From the Style Council
Professor Pam Peters provides LINGLINE readers with some details on the nature and work of the Style Council:
Style is one of those very flexible words that can mean almost anything you want it to ? in and around the score of definitions in the Macquarie Dictionary . In its meaning style reflects the eye and experience of the beholder, which is why its use is so variable, and often tied to a context.
You might then wonder how a group of people could discuss ?style? in such a collaborative way as does the Style Council, which meets this weekend in downtown Sydney. It?s a conference associated with the Dictionary Research Centre at MU, which convenes every 12 -18 months in one capital city or another, and has been held regularly since 1986. In fact it?s a uniquely Australian institution. One British commentator noted this rather ruefully, as he thought about the lack of public forums for discussing the language in other parts of the English-speaking world. None in the UK or the US, but only in Australia.
The Style Council is a conference rather than a closed body of people, like the French Academy. Its participants vary with the conference themes ? though there?s a core group of what we might call ?regulars?, typically editors and journalists, as well as those associated with writing dictionaries, usage guides and style manuals. They are the professional wordsmiths and language practitioners of the nation, whose business requires them to be up-to-date with changing trends in the language. At the Style Council they hear papers on current pressures on the language, and discuss their significance.
This year?s Style Council is concerned with ?Public and Professional Discourse?. The public part picks up themes from Don Watson?s book on ?the decay of public language?, though most speakers are keen to say that public discourse is alive and kicking. We just need to be very clear about its contextual purpose, and the kinds of raw material that the media have to work from. (Ministerials and corporate press releases are not guaranteed to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth!) Speakers will also make striking historical comparisons with what?s happening in Australian public discourse today.
Style Council speakers will discuss some of the communication challenges for professionals carrying out their business as lawyers, medical practitioners, corporate managers and editors themselves ? such as those who become involved in editing PhD theses for candidates at Australian universities. The ethical question of how far a professional editor should lend her/his services to the needs of the candidate is a dilemma currently being address by the peak academic body Deans of Graduate Studies (which rejoices in the acronym DOGS). The Style Council also gets down to the nuts and bolts of the English language, to particular idioms and grammatical constructions, and to the uses of metaphor in business management, including ?greenwash?, the veneer of environmental friendliness that may be seen in annual reports these days.
If you would like further details about the forthcoming Style Council conference, visit the website at http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/style
Jonathan Swift is on record three hundred years ago as saying that the true definition of ?style? was ?proper words in proper places?. This was his advice to a young clergyman, who would of course have to watch his words when talking to his parishioners in church and off the record. The contexts of communicating are always very important. On the larger scale, we nowadays take it for granted that Australian style, the Australian way of saying things appropriate for the antipodean context. At the Dictionary Research Centre, Macquarie University, we continually research the details of Australian English, and twice a year publish a magazine called Australian Style , thanks to the support of the National Office of the Information Economy in Canberra. The magazine discusses questions about the use of English in the Australian context, and thus the ?proper? words for us when communicating with each other.
But there is a larger need these days - as Australians communicate freely with others overseas ? the need to understand the limits of Australian style, and where it diverges from what we may call international uses of English. A certain Australian prime minister traveling in Japan caused consternation among translators when he used the idiom playing "silly buggers"! And clearly it was out of place. At moments like those the Australian needs something more international, a ?go-anywhere? kind of English which is not too attached to a place, but sensitive to the global community. This is where the new Cambridge Guide to English Usage comes in, to indicate ?international English selections?, wherever they can be distilled out of all the variety of English around us.
Upcoming Conferences and Workshops 
Applied Linguistics Workshop 2004 - Language Teaching: A Potential for Research. Saturday 28 August 2004, MacCallum Room, Holme Building, The University of Sydney.
Keynote Speakers:
- Frances Christie
University of Sydne y
University of Melbourne - Tim McNamara
University of Melbourne - Helen Marriott
Monash University
Call for registration - The School of Languages and Cultures will host its first Applied Linguistics Workshop at the University of Sydney on Saturday 28 August 2004. Themed "Language Teaching: A Potential for Research", this one day event aims to foreground and encourage teaching-led research in our universities and provide language teachers with an opportunity to share ideas on present and future research projects.
To register, please email alice.caffarel@arts.usyd.edu.au by Friday 23 July 2004. As registration is free and numbers limited to 50, you should register quickly if you wish to attend. A programme will be sent to registered participants by the end of July.
Call for participation - International Language and Cognition Conference (ILCC 2004) Coffs Harbour (Australia) 10-12 September 2004 http://www.ilcc.une.edu.au/ at the Pacific Bay Resort.
This interdisciplinary conference brings together researchers working on the interface of language and cognition. The conference centres around the three themes Characterisation of Mental States, Categorisation, and Development. Contributions from 17 countries are presented by researchers working in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Linguistics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Psychology.
Keynote speakers:
- Stephen Crain, University of Maryland, United States
- Pete Mandik, William Paterson University, United States
- Mark Steedman, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- Roger Wales, La Trobe University, Australia
- Anna Wierzbicka, Australian National University, Australia
You can access the final program at http://www.ilcc.une.edu.au/program.php . The conference abstracts are available at http://www.ilcc.une.edu.au/abstracts.php
First Nigerian SFL Conference
The first Nigerian SFL conference and teaching workshop is to be held in Zaria from 1 - 8 August next on the theme 'Text and its Deconstruction from the Systemic Functional Linguistics Perspective'. The conference is the result of the huge resourcefulness and energy of Gbenga Ibileye, Ernest Akerejola and other members the Systemic Functional Linguistics Association of Nigeria committee. For further details you could contact Ernest Akerejola at eakerejola@ling.mq.edu.au
Second ICEG - Hyderabad, AP, India (From Christian Matthiessen)
A few years ago the First International Congress on English Grammar (ICEG) was held at the Central Institute for English and Foreign Languages in Hyderabad, AP, India. It was a very nice and successful event, and the second ICEG is now being announced for the end of the year. I hope many of you will be able to attend; the deadline for papers is the 1st of August, 2004.
It will be a fascinating event in its own right; but it is also part of the multi-stranded collaboration that we have been developing with scholars and teachers in India over a number of years. This congress will be an opportunity to renew and establish contacts - including contacts between teachers in India and our MA students.
December/ January is a very pleasant time - arguably the best -- in this part of India. And there'd be many wonderful places to travel to in conjunction with the congress.
For further information go to http://www.bitsathy.ac.in/ and click on the tab for International Congress on English Grammar.
New Publications
From Mouton de Gruyter: http://www.mouton-publishers.com/
To sign up for our FREE electronic newsletter, please visit our website at http://www.degruyter.de/newsletter Institutions who now subscribe to IRAL and IJSL will receive additional FREE online access to back issues (2001-2003) of IRAL and IJSL. For more information or to order a subscription, please contact julia.ulrich@degruyter.com .
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (IRAL) . Editors: Peter Jordens and Eric Kellerman. ISSN 0019-042X.
For a FREE electronic sample issue of IRAL (Vol. 41, Number 1, 2003), please visit http://www.degruyter.de/journals/iral/384_6103_ENU_h.htm
Volume 42-2, 2004- Special Issue on Interfaces. Edited by Petra Bos, Bart Hollebrandse, and Petra Sleeman .
- Introduction: The pragmatics-syntax and the semantics-syntax interface in acquisition
- A fresh look at how young children encode new referents
- Guided learners of French and the acquisition of emphatic constructions
- The semantic constraints of the Basic Variety in L2-Dutch of adolescent Moroccans in the Netherlands
- On the syntax-semantics interface in Dutch: Adult and child L2 acquisition compared
- Discourse integration and indefinite subjects in child English
- Topichood and quantification in L1 Dutch
For more information, please visit http://www.degruyter.de/rs/384_392_ENU_h.htm
International Journal of the Sociology of Language (IJSL) General Editor: Joshua A. Fishman. ISSN: 0165-2516
For a FREE electronic sample issue of IJSL (Volume 159) and other Mouton de Gruyter journals, please visit our website at http://www.mouton-publishers.com/ or http://www.degruyter.de/journals/ijsl/384_6102_ENU_h.htm
Issue 168, 2004. The Sociolinguistics of Cyprus I (Studies from the Greek Sphere) Edited by Dionysis Goutsos. Topics
For more information, please visit http://www.degruyter.de/rs/384_403_ENU_h.htm
New Journal - Communication and Medicine: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Healthcare, Ethics and Society. Editor: Srikant Sarangi.
The articles of the first issue are available as free downloads at http://www.degruyter.de/journals/commed/commed1_1.html
Volume 1-1, 2004 includes :
- Editorial: Towards a communicative mentality in medical and healthcare practice
- The discursive construction of competence and responsibility in medical collegial talk
- Space, repetition and collective interlocution: Psychiatric interviews in a Borneo longhouse
- Cognitive overload and communication in two healthcare settings
- Thirty-five voices in search of an author: What focus groups reveal about patients' experiences in managed care settings
- Symptoms and signs in particular: The influence of the medical concern on the shape of physician-patient talk
- Joint working relationships: Children, parents and child healthcare nurses at work
- Speaking about dying in the intensive care unit, and its implications for multidisciplinary end-of-life care
- Forum discussion - The unjust world problem: Towards an ethics of advocacy for healthcare providers and researchers
For more information, please visit http://www.degruyter.de/rs/384_6971_ENU_h.htm To submit a manuscript, please contact Professor Srikant Sarangi, Director, Health Communication Research Centre, Cardiff University, P.O. Box 94, Cardiff CF10 3XB, United Kingdom, Email: sarangi@cardiff.ac.uk or commed@cardiff.ac.uk , Website: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/hcrc
Positions Vacant
Senior Lecturer - Teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences, School of Education, University of South Australia.
The School of Education, located within the Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences, provides a wide range of undergraduate, postgraduate and research degrees from Early Childhood through the schooling sector and Adult and Vocational Education, and is involved in offshore programs.
The School is seeking to appoint a suitably qualified and committed individual with experience in teacher education in TESOL. The successful applicant will be someone who is able to lead and build TESOL programs and projects within Australia and internationally. Coordination of the TESOL strand of the coursework Master of Education is an important focus for the position, and requires familiarity with research and practice in second language acquisition, and language and culture studies. Experience is essential in teaching TESOL curriculum design, materials development, classroom teaching and assessment, and TESOL program management and evaluation.
Essential criteria include PhD or equivalent accreditation and standing in the field of TESOL; a record of scholarly and professional achievement; experience in teaching at tertiary level and evidence of effective practice in the teaching of English to second language learners in EFL environments.
Further information about the School of Education can be accessed at: http://www.unisa.edu.au/eds/
This position will be located at the Magill Campus. Appointment Details: Academic Level C, Full-time Continuing, Fraction : 1.0 Contact Jackie Knowles on (08) 8302 4431. Closing Date: 5.00pm Wednesday 28 July 2004
ESL Teacher/ Tour Leader - Work with other cultures - Lots of Fun to be had - Casual teaching position
Are you flexible, creative and enjoy working with students of other cultures. Positions exist for casual ESL teachers in the Campbelltown, Hornsby and Penrith area for the period July 19 - August 9 No teaching qualifications required however classroom experience necessary. Students of Education encouraged to apply. Hourly teaching rate of pay of $20/hr, 9am -5pm. Excursions in and around Sydney, paid at a daily rate also part of this fun role. Kate 0416 025 477 Email mailto:commed@cardiff.ac.uk (This position and other positions can be found at http://www.seek.com.au
Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education (Second Language Education) - Department of Arts and Language Education, School of Education, University of Waikato(NZ).
The Department of Arts and Language Education in the School of Education, University of Waikato has a national and international research reputation in language and literacy education and strong undergraduate and postgraduate teacher education programmes in the language and literacy education field. As part of the ongoing expansion of the Department in this area, we are seeking a lecturer with particular research and teaching expertise in second language literacy education. The successful applicant will be expected to teach in the Postgraduate Diploma in Language and Literacy Education, and provide research supervision at graduate level, in the area of second language teaching and learning, as well as contributing to the undergraduate teacher education programme in the area of cultural and linguistic diversity. Additional research expertise that strengthens and/or complements the current teaching and research activities of the Department would be welcomed. The applicant may also be expected to negotiate and supervise school-based work and student teacher practicums.
The ideal applicant will have a Masters, and preferably a Doctorate, in second language education, an active research agenda, and relevant teaching experience as a professional educator. Experience in school-based second language learning contexts would be an advantage, as would a sound understanding of English in the New Zealand Curriculum. The successful applicant will require effective communication skills, including the ability to work collegially as a professional member of both the language and literacy team and the wider Arts and Language Education Department. Particular research and teaching interests and expertise should be detailed in the application.
Information on the School of Education and the Department of Art and Language Education can be found at http://www.waikato.ac.nz/education/ Enquiries of an academic nature can be made to Dr Richard Ward, Chairperson, Department of Arts and Language Education, telephone ++64 7 838 4500 extension 7906, or email: wardrs@waikato.ac.nz The current salary range for lecturers is $51,028 to $62,301 per annum. Applications close on Friday, 23 July 2004.
Lecturer position - University of Surrey, Roehampton (UK)
We are looking for a visiting lecturer to teach on the BA/BSc Applied English Studies degree and the BA TESOL degree at the University of Surrey Roehampton. Please see http://www.jobs.ac.uk/ job type: Academic, Education Studies London if you are interested. Refer to Carole Sedgwick, Senior Lecturer ELT, School of English and Modern Languages, University of Surrey Roehampton, Digby Stuart Colleg, eRoehampton Lane, London SW15 5PH, Tel:+44(0)20 8392 3364.
Assistant and Associate Professors- Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice - NIE (Singapore)
The Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP) of the National Institute of Education, NTU is the largest funded educational research Centre in the Asia Pacific. The Centre has developed a core research program which focuses on the improvement of pedagogy in Singapore schools in key curricular areas, including: information technology,Malay, Tamil, Mandarin, English, Science and Mathematics. It is also developing a range of other projects in areas such as multiliteracies, project work pedagogy and assessment, a sociolinguistic survey, home/school literacy transitions, teacher education and the 'new sciences'. The general orientation of the Centre is on undertaking research to aid educational reform and innovation in response to new economies, new institutional and cultural formations in Singapore, Asia and internationally.
The Centre is seeking Assistant and Associate Professors for initial 3 year contracts (renewable) with expertise in any combination of the following areas:
- School improvement and development
- Design experiment and pedagogy reform
- Discourse analysis and classroom interaction analysis with a focus onScience, Mathematics or a curriculum area other than English or English as a Second Language
- Applied corpus linguistics with a focus on quantitative analysis of classroom transcripts
- Teacher change, in-service training and program design
- ICT in Education: especially on the pedagogical applications in school disciplines
- Science Education: project work, assessment, inquiry
Candidates should have a PhD in education or relevant social science; general methodological training in both qualitative and quantitative research with a specific area of methodological expertise; knowledge of research design. Prior knowledge and experience studying and working in Asian educational contexts, and language proficiency in Malay, Tamil or Mandarin are not essential but would be a major advantage for applicants. Please refer to our website at http://www.nie.edu.sg/html/employment.htm for more details. Please complete and send the prescribed application form obtainable from our website together with your detailed curriculum vitae, which should include area of research interest, list of publications and the names and addresses, e-mail addresses and telefax numbers of three referees to: Dean, Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, National Institute of Education, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616, Fax: (65) 6896 9845.
For more information, please contact Professor Allan Luke, Dean/CRPP at Email: aluke@nie.edu.sg . Closing Date: Thursday, 30 September 2004 .
Two Research Assistant positions - King's College London, UK.
There are vacancies for two research assistants on two new projects in the Department of Education and Professional Studies, School of Social Science and Public Policy. Both projects are concerned with language, ethnicity and disadvantage.
Vacancy One - W1/DAE/68/04 - Job interviews, ethnicity and disadvantage: a study of interaction between interviews and candidates.
The aim of the research is to obtain a better understanding of how interactions are managed in job interviews and to determine whether ethnic minority candidates are systematically disadvantaged. You should have a background in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics or discourse analysis or in a closely related field and have experience of working/researching with ethnic minority groups.
The post is a full time job for 10 months, September 1 2004 - June 30 2005. The salary will be on the RA1B salary scale, point 4, currently ?18,893 per annum plus ?2,134 London Allowance.
Vacancy Two - W1/DAE/69/04 - Understanding and Misunderstanding in multi-ethnic, multi-lingual encounters in health settings.
One research project and two development projects are to be run together over one year. The research project will be looking at GPs' selection interviews. The development projects will be developing an analytical tool and a video for doctor patient encounters. You should have a background in discourse, sociolinguistics or applied linguistics or in medical sociology or anthropology with a strong interest in language and communication.
The project is for one year, from September 1 2004 to August 31 2005. The salary will be on the RAIB salary scale, point 5, currently ?19,942 plus ?2,134 LA pa.
For further details and an application pack, please contact Personnel Department, King's College London, Strand Campus, London WC2R 2LS, or e-mail strand-recruitment@kcl.ac.uk quoting reference number W1/DAE/68/04 for Vacancy one and W1/DAE/69/04 for Vacancy two. Closing date for applications is 14 July 2004. Equality of Opportunity is College Policy. Anyone interested in these positions can email Celia Roberts at: celiaroberts@lineone.net
Research Associate - Systemic Functional Linguistics/Discourse Analysis - Simon Fraser University (Canada)
(Application Deadline - Open until filled - Date Posted June 7th, 2004.) Two positions are available starting January 1st, 2005 and employment will be for 2-3 years.
Job Description - Two applicants are being sought for the position of Research Associate to work on the project entitled Therapy as Discourse: A Functional Linguistic Analysis of the Therapeutic Process in Four Different Kinds of Couple?s Therapy. This research is funded by the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada. The project is based at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada).
Description of Project - The proposed research brings to bear the resources of SFL theory and methodology to gain a better understanding of the therapy process at the level where it is, in practice, enacted; the unfolding conversation between therapists and clients. Specifically, the investigation is about how language is used in couples therapy, how language use changes over the course of therapy, and how this process provides clients with new linguistic resources in order to change their social relationships. We are also interested in how particular therapy orientations may be in practice constituted by the distinctive sequential use of specific linguistic resources and genres. The central aims in this research are: to explore and identify these linguistic resources and genres, and to evaluate the hypothesis that different generic sequences are used to realize different therapeutic approaches in couples therapy (e.g., multigenerational, narrative, strategic), and to explore how these approaches tend to facilitate specific kinds of client ontogenesis. In order to investigate these issues we propose to examine clinical data (therapy conversations) generated by experienced couples therapists in ecologically realistic circumstances for evidence of recurring linguistic patterns. We will use previously validated methods of linguistic analysis (SFL) to better understand how therapy sessions are realized by a series of linguistic genres, how different therapeutic approaches may be differentiated in terms of these specific linguistic patterns and how these different linguistic developments generate the particular changes the clients may experience in therapy.
Requirements -M.A. degree, Background in Systemic Functional Linguistics, Enrolled in PhD program, Job Duties - Analyze therapy transcripts and video-tapes using an SFL approach. Ensure that the research lab is running effectively. May involve travel and extended stay to do research in Salzburg, Austria.
Application packages need to include: an up-to-date curriculum vitae, samples of published work (or MA thesis), summary letter highlighting the applicant?s qualifications for the appointment and their research expertise, 2 letters of recommendation. Salary - either SSHRC Doctoral Student Stipend or RAship. Application address - Email:Post: Send application either by email or post to: peter.muntigl@sbg.ac.at Dr. Peter Muntigl, Department of English, University of Salzburg, Akademiestrasse 24, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria. Contact Information - email address above or telephone +43662 8044 4449 (Austria).