Previous Events 2012

Date : 14 December 2012
Time : 4:30pm -- 6:30pm
Venue : B7603, 7/F Lift 3, Blue Zone, Academic 1, City University of Hong Kong

'Identity' commonly understood tends to refer to such relatively 'permanent' categories as nationality, culture (typically national-culture), geographical or regional origin, occupation, roles in the family, age, gender, and is usually used – by the researcher – as a variable to explain human behaviour. These more-or-less 'permanent' identities also tend to come with ready-made labels: Chinese, American, Singaporean, dad, adolescents, women. But identities need not be 'permanent' (whatever that means) or ready-made. They can be, and often are, 'occasioned', i.e., invoked or made on the spot to fit an occasion, and used to serve specific purposes in a particular moment in an interaction. In this presentation, I will show some examples, from a corpus of naturally occurring talk, of 'categories-on-the-fly' and illustrate their varied uses as an interactional resource.

Professor LUKE Kang Kwong is Professor of Linguistics at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Prior to joining Nanyang he was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong, and Head of the Department of Linguistics from 1997 to 2006. His research is in the areas of Chinese Linguistics and Conversation Analysis. He has worked on Cantonese phonology and grammar and the interface between language, cognition, and interaction using Chinese and English data. Among his more well-known publications are Utterance Particles in Cantonese Conversation, Language and Society in Hong Kong, and Telephone Calls: Unity and Diversity in the Structure of Telephone Conversations across Languages and Cultures. His latest publication is a special issue for Discourse Processes on 'Turns and Increments' which he co-edited with Sandra Thompson and Tsuyoshi Ono.

This series of seminars will address the stylistic effect of grammatical metaphor (GM) from the perspective of functional-cognitive stylistics based on empirical and conceptual research. It is argued that GM can function as an important style marker, whose stylistic value resides in the "natural" relation between meaning and wording. The stylistic effect of GM is dependent on one hand upon the interaction among interlocutors in the context, and on the other hand upon their mutual cognitive environment. Thus a research paradigm is proposed based on the complementaries between functional linguistics and cognitive linguistics by viewing language as a complex adaptive system, which emerges through adaptive interactions between language users and that over time continues to evolve as a self-organizing system, adapting itself to their needs and capacities. This approach may throw light not only on the synchronic description of the stylistic effect of GM but also on its diachronic evolution, which is deemed as an indispensable part of semogenesis. GM is then interpreted as an emergent phenomenon, the result of phylogenesis, which has a strong causal impact on ontogenesis and in turn on logogenesis.

Professor LIU Chengyu , PhD, is Professor at Southwest University (SWU), a key university under the direct administration of the Ministry of Education, which is located at Chongqing, China. He is Deputy Dean of the School of Foreign Languages, Director of the Institute for Foreign Language Education, and a research fellow at the Institute for Language Function and Cognition at SWU. His teaching career has also included adjunct faculty positions at Sichuan International Studies University, Guizhou Normal University, and Guizhou University for Nationalities. His research areas have included functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and stylistics.

Date : 16 November 2012
Time : 2:30pm -- 5:30pm
Venue : B7603, 7/F Blue Zone, Academic 1, City University of Hong Kong

Session 1 : A New Form of Academic Publication: Annotations and Analytics (Prof Lewis Lancaster)
The pattern of reading is shifting dramatically as digital data becomes a target for most researchers. The practice of collecting relevant passages seldom includes read- ing an entire book. Our publications should relect this type of research and the grow- ing awareness of the importance of timely reporting of indings and analysis of data. The creation of a "library" of annotations may be one solution. The process will require new software, library assistance, strategic recruitment across disciplines, and innovative approaches to analysis and interpretation.

Session 2 : Technology Overview of How to Implement Annotated Analytics (Mr Howie Lan)
The presentation will give an overview of existing new technologies and methods which can used to implement Annotated Analytics.

Session 3 : Artist's Annotations (Mr Linus Lancaster)
This presentation will describe a range of applications for visual and performative art projects in the proposed e-publishing platform. Its focus will be on mutual inluences between a variety of artist's projects and digital formatting, as well as some of the potential of new analytic processes for art and research.

Professor Lewis Lancaster is Professsor (Emeritus) at the University of California, Berkeley. He is Directorof the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI), a research unit of the School of Infor- mation at Berkeley. His teaching career has included adjunct faculty positions at City University of Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong, Peking University (Beijing), and Korea University. Research areas have included digital projects for large data sets in Chinese, Sanskrit, and Pali languages and the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for the Humanities. The Korean Buddhism canon visualization and analytics is on display at the ALIVE theatre at the Centre for Creative Media of City University.

Mr Howie Lan has been working in areas of applying new technologies, new methods, and new ideas for Humanities for more than two decades. Projects including digitization of large scale historical text repositories (such as Buddhist Canon in multiple languages), digital Cultural Atlas using Temporal GIS technology, and Text Analysis and Pattern Detection for large text collec- tions with interactive visualization in 3-D and Virtual Reality Environments.

Mr Linus Lancaster is a full time art instructor/art director at Healdsburg Unified School District in Northern California. He is the founder of the International LandBuoy Project, a collaborative, theory and performance driven project dedicated to a variety of interventions and independent scholarship. Currently he is a PhD. candidate in transdisciplinary studies (philosophy and art practice) with the Planetary Collegium at University of Plymouth U.K.

Date : 14 June 2012
Time : 4:30pm -- 6:30pm
Venue : B7603, Blue Zone, Academic 1, City University of Hong Kong

This paper introduces the notion of 'Identity Management' which is defined as any institutionalized or localized effort made to deliberately shape or direct individual or group identities. After setting up this framework, the paper focuses on the role education and curricula play in identity management. The paper shows how governments can use educational curricula as institutionalized ways in which to regulate and conform the identity of the students in alignment to dominant policies and ideologies. In order to do this, this paper draws on examples from English language textbooks and English language classroom practices in different countries to shows how language and language education can be used to manage identities of school children. In doing this, we will look at ways in which language localization practices are integrated into educational material which allow textbook writers to infuse ideological beliefs as 'normalized' social practices within the school curricula. The paper will end with a discussion of how research using identity management as an informing framework can be useful for work not only in education, but other contexts as well.

Date : 12 June 2012
Time : 4:30pm -- 6:30pm
Venue : B7603, 7/F Lift 3, Blue Zone, Academic 1, City University of Hong Kongg

Research on World Englishes typically uses nation states as a way of labeling and categorizing different types of Englishes. This paper argues that this principle of using a nation state to name varieties of Englishes in a World Englishes context is quite problematic and may in fact be counter-productive in our understanding of Englishes today. In order to elaborate on this argument, this presentation will present a critique of research on China English. After reviewing the literature on China English, the presentation will show that many of the features that are identified as China English are not necessarily uniquely Chinese. In doing so, this paper will point out a series of methodological issues in the literature in the field. For example, we will note that most of the features identified in the literature are also observed in other inner, outer and/or expanding circles of Englishes. If this is the case, then one might ask why it is necessary to mark these features as those of China English, instead of considering them features of 'contact Englishes'. In addition, we will observe how the literature uses rules of written English to analyze feature of oral English in China. This, again, gives us descriptions of China English that do necessarily represent China English, but rather are features of oral English in general. Based on these observations, we will argue that the current literature on China English – and indeed World Englishes - needs to be critically reexamined and will consider alternative approaches to documenting World Englishes.

Dr Ahmar Mahboob teaches (applied) linguistics at the University of Sydney, Australia. He has published on a range of topics in linguistics and has a special interest in understanding language variation and its relationship to issues in education.

(summary in brief)
Professor Jonathan Webster, Director of HCLS, delivered a seminar titled"The Language of Presidents: studies in textureand architecture", in Peking University on 23 March 2012, under the invitation of the Institute of Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics.

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(summary in brief)
On 26 March, Professor Webster proceeded to Capital Normal University, Beijing, for the seminar "TeXt, TeXture and ArchiTeXture", which was the 21st Distinguished Scholar Forums organized by the Department of English Education, College of Foreign Languages.

For the whole text, click here .