News & Events

10 April 2025

HCLS has been appointed as a liaison of ISO after voting by permanent member countries. The appointment demonstrates the international recognition of the research and expertise that HCLS embodies. Liaisons can be established between ISO committees, between ISO committees and committees of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and between ISO committees and external organizations. In this new role, HCLS is particularly associated with the task force on the semantic annotation of language resources within ISO's Technical Committee 37 Language and Terminology. The role of HCLS as an external liaison ensures that the centre's specialist experience and expertise are included during the drafting process of an international standard.

29 March 2025

HCLS Director, Prof Alex Fang attended the 2025 Annual Meeting of the China National Technical Committee for Standardization of Language and Terminology as a reappointed member certified by the Standardization Administration of China, which was held on 29 March 2025 in Beijing. At the end of the meeting, he gave a keynote speech on the Latest Developments of International Standardization Research in Language Resources and Terminology from the Perspective of Artificial Intelligence (人工智能视角下国际语言术语标准研究最新发展). In the talk, he reviewed some of the latest international standards addressing AI technologies that have been jointly published by ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). He shared his visions about the paramount importance of language resources and the central role of linguistic methods to meet the emergent requirements arising from the booming AI industry.

30 December 2024

HCLS member Prof Shengqing Liao has been awarded a major project of China National Social Science Fund 國家社科基金重大項目. He is Project Coordinator of the project "Research on the spread and countermeasures of false information related to China in the international public opinion war" 國際輿論戰中涉華虛假信息傳播及對策研究. Prof Alex Fang is Co-Principal Investigator of a sub-project on linguistic features of media discourse. The award represents the highest national recognition of the collaborative research between the Centre and Fudan University. Prof Liao is visiting HCLS for two weeks, during which time he will perform some preparatory research and discuss with Centre members.

19 December 2024

Prof Tony Mcenery started today as Visiting Professor to the Halliday Centre. He is Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS, UK) and Distinguished Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Lancaster University, UK. He has been a member of HCLS for the past four years. His current research projects include Lana, a 10-million-word corpus of spoken American English in collaboration with the University of North Arizona, building on the success of his Spoken BNC2014 of British English. His latest major publications include Fundamental Principles of Corpus Linguistics published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. He has got another book publication coming up next, soon. During his visit of one month, he will work with the Centre's members on corpus-based approaches to journalistic discourse and the annotation of language resources for LLMs as well as directing research students in the area of corpus-based approaches to discourse analysis. His visit is generously sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences headed by Prof Alfred Ho.

10 December 2024

A delegation from Zhongnan University visited the Centre yesterday on 10 December. The visitors included six senior members of the School of Liberal Arts: the dean and the associate dean, the head of the department of communication, two associate heads of the departments of Chinese and a professor specialising in cultural industry. They met with Alex on issues related to research and development in the area of corpus-based language technologies. Discussions focused on the construction and management of large linguistic corpora in response to the emergent requirement for high-quality language resources arising from the latest development of artificial intelligence.

31 October 2024

Prof Alex Fang was invited to visit the School of Liberal Arts at Zhongnan University in Changsha for academic exchange during the period of 30 Oct - 3 Nov 2024. He gave a talk on the topic of "Corpus-based investigation of engagement in journalistic discourse" in the Department of Chinese on 31 October 2024. The talk described his joint research with Prof Min Dong comparing the use of engagement types between British and Chinese journalistic discourse across news and editorials carried in newspapers, magazines and the Internet, engagement being one of the three elements laid out in Appraisal Theory by the Centre's affiliated member Prof Jim Martin at the University of Sydney and his co-author Dr Peter White at the University of New South Wales. The audience included undergraduates and research students as well as faculty members. The talk is featured in a report posted by the National Language Promotion Base at Zhongnan University. Click here to read the report.

24 October 2024

HCLS received a delegation of four professors, led by Prof Min Dong of the School of Foreign Languages, Beihang University. The discussions covered joint research and personnel exchange in the areas of corpus-based approaches to language. The meeting identified mutual interests in discourse analysis and semantic annotation of language resources.

11–15 September 2024

The 2024 International Forum on Interoperable Semantic Annotation of Language Resources in Beijing
Guided by
China National Institute of Standardization Organized by
· The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies, City University of Hong Kong
· School of Foreign Languages, Beihang University
Sponsored by
· School of Computer Science and Engineering, Beihang University

The advent and increasing importance of large language models (LLMs) have called for urgent attention to the semantic analysis of linguistic corpora. The purpose is to achieve better interoperability and exchange of semantically annotated language resources for better transparency leading towards the improvements of AI technologies such as generative pre-trained transformer (GPT). In response to the emergent requirements, the 2024 International Forum on Interoperable Semantic Annotation of Language Resources in Beijing is organised under the auspices of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in conjunction with the National Standardization Administration of the People’s Republic of China (SAC). It is held on the series of ISO standards for semantic annotation arising from the work at ISO’s Working Group 2 of the language resource management sub-committee. These standards cover general principles of semantic annotation for space, time, event, quantification, dialogue acts, semantic roles, discourse relations, and evaluative language as well as their interlinking.

18 August 2024

Centre Director Prof Alex C. Fang gave an opening speech at the School of Communication in Yunnan University on Saturday 10 August, marking the beginning of the Third Graduate Summer School on Frontiers in International (South and Southeast Asia) Communication Theory and Research Methods, 10–18 August 2024. He subsequently gave a talk on engagement patterns in British and Chinese media discourse. On 11 August, the Centre's core member Prof Christine Huang gave a talk on risk management. On 13 August, Prof Christian Matthiessen delivered a lecture on the topic of registers and communication followed by Prof Tony McEnery's lecture on 16 August on corpus-based reconstruction of the Gladstone campaign. The 9-day programme consisted of a total of 38 talks by well-know scholars in media and communication as well as linguistics. It was concluded on 18 August, having received extensive coverage by the media, including People's Daily, Yunnan Daily, Yunnan News, and Yunnan Net.

10–18 August 2024

International Graduate Summer School on Frontiers in International (South Asia and Southeast Asia) Communication Theory and Research Methods Organized by · Faculty of Journalism and Communication, Communication University of China · School of Journalism (School of International Communication in South and Southeast Asia), Yunnan University · The Journalism and Communication Sub-Committee, South and Southeast Asia University Network · The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies, City University of Hong Kong Building on the successful hosting of the graduate summer school in 2022 and 2023, the Faculty of Journalism and Communication at the Communication University of China, the School of Journalism at Yunnan University (School of International Communication South and Southeast Asian), the Journalism and Communication Sub-Committee of the South and Southeast Asian University Alliance, and the Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies at City University of Hong Kong will once again organize the Third Graduate Summer School on Frontiers in International (South and Southeast Asia) Communication Theory and Research Methods, held in Kunming, Yunnan Province, 10–18 August 2024. In the face of unprecedented changes not seen in a century, this summer school aims to strengthen the construction of an academic system for international communication with Chinese characteristics and to enable participants to better grasp the changes and trends in international communication practice and theory. In response to the new era, new stage, and new tasks, it is the mission of young scholars and students to strengthen communication and exchange within the international academic communication community and to convey Chinese stories, voices, and culture. Contributing intellectual strength to the construction of China’s international communication capacity is also the founding purpose of the summer school. The summer school will invite renowned scholars from home and abroad to lecture and exchange on cutting-edge theories and practical issues in international communication and to provide lectures and training on mainstream and frontier research methods in international communication. Through various methods such as lectures, seminars, and special activities, it aims to enhance the research interest and theoretical level of young scholars, doctoral, and master’s students in the field of international communication, expand research paths, enrich research perspectives, and innovate research methods, contributing to the establishment of an international academic community in communication. Follow this link for more information

9-11 June 2024

Prof Alex Fang visited Beijing 9-11 June 2024. He met with colleagues from Standardization Administration of China (SAC), China National Institute of Standardization (CNIS), Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Beihang), and Tsinghua University. Discussions covered collaborations in the areas of international standards, annotation of evaluative language, and large language models.

18-24 May 2024

ISO/TC 37/SC 4 resolved to appoint Prof Alex Chengyu Fang as secretary of ISO/TC 37/SC 4/WG 2 Semantic annotation to manage the administration of WG 2 affairs. Alex attended the meetings in Turin, Italy, in his capacity as representative expert certified by the Standardization Administration of China (SAC) and expert member of ISO in the area of language resource management.

26 April 2024

Distinguished Prof Tony McEnery FRSA from Lancaster University visited the Halliday Centre and met with Director Prof Alex Fang FRSA on Friday 26 April 2024. They discussed matters related to joint collaborations and dearly remembered those whom they knew in common, including Prof Sidney Greenbaum at UCL, Shichun Gui at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Michael Halliday at Sydney and Geoffrey Leech at Lancaster, who inspired them immensely in their corpus-based approaches to language. The Computational Analysis of English (Longman 1987) given by Geoff to Tony and by Shichun to Alex prompted both of them into computational experiments on corpus data using programming languages such as LISP and Prolog.

25 April 2024

Centre member Prof Michaela Mahlberg has been promoted to the position of Humboldt Chair and Professor of Digital Humanities at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. At the same time, she remains associated with the University of Birmingham as Honorary Professor. Many congratulations on this significant recognition of her academic achievements!

24 April 2024

HCLS co-organised an international conference on the theme of Brain, Language and Communication together with Yunnan Daily Press Group, School of Journalism (College of International Communication of South and Southeast Asia), Yunnan University, and The South and Southeast Asian University Network. The conference was sponsored by Yunnan Province Key Laboratory of All Media Convergence and was held 22-23 April 2024 on the premises of Yunnan Daily Press Group in Kunming, Yunnan Province. Five members of HCLS participated in the event and gave talks on their respective research. They are listed as follows: 1. Min Dong (BeihangU): Nominal Construction of Epistemological Positions and Power Relations in Journalistic Stance Taking: Variation across British and Chinese Media Discourse in English. 2. Alex C. Fang (CityU): Patterns of Engagement in Journalistic Discourse: From the Perspective of Metadiscursive Nouns. 3. Christine Huang (CityU): Marketing Management, Crisis Consultations and Conflicts Resolution in Communication Strategies. 4. Tony McEnery (LancasterU): Corpus-based View on News Media Representation of Slavery in the 19th Century Britain. 5. Niels O. Schiller (CityU): From Mind to Mouth - An Overview of Speech Planning Processes. A key ally of HCLS, Prof Shengqing Liao, Dean of School of Journalism at Yunnan University, gave the following talk: Prof Shengqing Liao (YunnanU): The influence of multimodal information on the credibility of online messages based on the theory of cognitive channels: An adjustable mediator model. The event marked a pioneering effort to combine the disciplines of brain, language and communication in the study of journalistic discourse. It has also generated enthusiastic expressions of interest in collaborations across disciplines, departments, universities and social sectors. HCLS will continue to play a vital role in the promotion and development of appliable linguistics to achieve even greater social impacts.

22 April 2024

Centre director Prof Alex Fang and centre member Prof Niels Schiller visited Yunnan Daily Press Group on 22 April 2024. They met with the President of the Group and the director of the Key Laboratory of All Media Convergence of Yunnan Province. Prof Fang emphasised the importance of research in writer stance and reader engagement in journalistic writing. The president of Yunnan Daily and the lab director both expressed keen interest in collaborations with the Centre.

19 February 2024

Prof Shengqing Liao has just completed his visit to HCLS. As Dean of Journalism at Yunnan University and Professor of Communication at Fudan University, he held fruitful discussions with some of the key members of the centre for interdisciplinary collaborations across corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, neurolinguistics and communication studies. During his visit, he gave a talk on the topic of the audience perception and assessment of news credibility during the 2nd International Halliday Forum on Media Discourse Analysis. He played an instrumental role in the Centre's 2024 CRF grant application in fake news detection involving investigators from Beihang University, City University of Hong Kong, Fudan University, Hong Kong University, Lancaster University, and Yunnan University. During his visit, he participated in two rounds of discussions with Prof Niels Schiller and Prof Alex Fang for cross-institutional and cross-departmental collaborations between Yunnan University, Dept of Linguistics and Translation and the Halliday Centre. The discussions covered matters related to student exchange as well as joint research and the organisation of academic conferences.

1 February 2024

Professor Niels Olaf Schiller has joined the Centre as Core Member. Niels has been appointed by CityU as Professor and HoD of the Department of Linguistics and Translation. He has been Professor of Psycho- and Neurolinguistics at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics and a member of the management board of Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC) since 1 July 2006. His research areas include psycho- and neurolinguistics, in particular syntactic, morphological, and phonological processes in language production and reading aloud. He is further interested in articulatory-motor processes during speech production, language processing in neurologically impaired patients, and forensic phonetics. He is Associate Editor of Psychological Research and Frontiers in Psychology and editorial board member of Journal of Cognition and Biological Psychology. He is Academic Editor of PLoS ONE. His latest journal publications include the following: Tabassi Mofrad F. & Schiller N.O. (2023), Connectivity profile of middle inferior parietal cortex confirms the hypothesis about modulating cortical areas, Neuroscience 519: 1-9. Von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn S., Gupta A., Pablos L. & Schiller N.O. (2023), When left is right: the role of typological similarity in multilinguals’ inhibitory control performance, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 26(1): 165-178. Von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn S., Pablos Robles L. & Schiller N.O. (2022), Does your native language matter?: Neural correlates of typological similarity in non-native production, Lingue e Linguaggio 2022(1): 143-169. Tabassi Mofrad F. & Schiller N.O. (2022), Mapping caudal inferior parietal cortex supports the hypothesis about a modulating cortical area, NeuroImage 259: 119441. Niels's expertise and research interests will broaden the scope and profile of the research that HCLS embodies.

22 January 2024

The 2nd International Halliday Forum, on the theme of journalistic discourse, was held on Monday 22 January 2024. The talks explored the following topics: Measuring reader assessment of news credibility, by Shengqing Liao (Fudan and Yunnan Universities). Crisis management strategies, by Christine Huang (CityU). Multi-dimensional annotation of engagement in journalistic discourse, by Min Dong (BeihangU) and Alex Fang (CityU). ISO semantic annotation schemes, by Harry Bunt (Tilburg University). Social actor analysis applied to the Gladstone corpus, by Tony McEnery (Lancaster University).

19 January 2024

Prof Shengqing Liao has just joined the Centre as Visiting Professor. He is professor at Fudan University in Shanghai and Yunnan University in Kunming, where he serves as Dean of the School of Journalism, also known as College of International Communication of South and Southeast Asia. He was vice chairman of the Chinese Association of Ethnic Journalism & Communication as well as head of Department of Communication Studies, School of Journalism, at Fudan University. His visit will greatly strengthen the ongoing corpus-based research in journalistic discourse at HCLS.

8 December 2023

The Halliday Forum 2023 on Intelligent Applications of Languages Studies was held on 8 Dec. Centre director Prof Alex Fang opened the forum. Prof Kiyong Lee and Prof Jae Woong Choe, both of Korea Unviersity, were invited to deliver keynote talks. The core members of the Centre gave presentations on their latest research, touching on a variety of different topics, methodologies and thought-provoking findings. Research collaborators and associated PhD students attended the forum. The Centre director wishes to thank all the participants and looks forward to a future edition of greater and broader participation.

15-18 March 2022

REMLing 2022. A Hongkong-Beijing-Lancaster Symposium on Research Methodologies for PhD Studies in Linguistics.

7 September 2021

Elena Semino joined the Halliday Centre as Affiliated Member. She is Professor of Linguistics and Verbal Art and Director of ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science at Lancaster University.

22 August 2021

The Steering Committee of HCLS met and heard the Director's report on the latest developments. The committee endorsed the Centre's latest efforts to build a critical mass of expertise of core and affiliated members, grant applications to BHUA and SPPR, and international collaborations and fund raising activities. The committee endorsed healthcare language and communication as a strategic area of development for the centre and advised on imminent funding opportunities. The Steering Committee is chaired by Christine (CityU) and convened by Alex with Gerhard (Vienna) and Harry (Tilburg) as members. Jonathan as the Centre Advisor was also present at the meeting and spoke on strategic developments.

18 August 2021

Alex met with Prof Elena Semino, Director of the ESRC Center for Corpus Approaches to Social Sciences of Lancaster University, UK. Prof Jonathan Culpeper (HoD of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster), Prof Richard Walker (Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, CityU) and Prof Christine Huang (Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, CityU) were also at the meeting to discuss collaborations between the two research centres.

12 August 2021

Christoph Hafner joined the Halliday Centre as Core Member. He is Associate Professor in the Department of English at City University of Hong Kong.

26 July 2021

Ji Won Kim joined the Halliday Centre as Core Member. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at City University of Hong Kong.

23 July 2021

Christine Yi-Hui Huang joined the Halliday Centre as Core Member. Christine is Chair Professor of Communication and Media and Associate Dean for Faculty and Research at College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong.

22 July 2021

Tony Mcenery joined the Halliday Centre as Affiliated Member. He is Distinguished Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Lancaster University.

21 July 2021

Qingpeng Zhang joined the Halliday Centre as Core Member. He is Associate Professor at School of Data Science, City University of Hong Kong.

19 July 2021

Christian Matthiessen joined the Centre as Affiliated Member. A leading figure in systemic functional linguistics, he is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at Hunan University, Guest Professor at Beijing University of Science and Technology and Honorary Professor at the Australian University.

2 July 2021

Michaela Mahlberg joined the Centre as Affiliated Member. She is Professor of Corpus Linguistics and Director of the Centre for Corpus Research at the University of Birmingham.

1 July 2021

• Alex Fang was appointed by the President of CityU as Director of the Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies.
• Christine Huang was appointed by Dean of CLASS as Chair of the Steering Committee of the Centre. She is Associate Dean of CLASS for research and Chair Professor of Communication and Media (COM).
• Gerhard Budin was nominated as Steering Committee Member of the Centre. He is Professor for translational terminology and translation technology, Centre of Translation Studies, Vienna University, Austria.
• Harry Bunt was nominated as Steering Committee Member of the Centre. He is Professor of Language and Artificial Intelligence, School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University, the Netherlands.
• Jonathan Webster was appointed as Centre Advisor.

30 June 2021

Jonathan Webster retired as Director of the Halliday Centre of Intelligent Applications of Language Studies. He founded the Centre fifteen years ago in April 2006.

18 June 2021

Alex Fang was invited by Shandong University and gave a talk entitled From London School of Linguistics to Corpora of Spoken Chinese. The talk, addressing the emergent issue of speech understanding, reviews the traditional emphasis on speech in British corpus linguistics and traces the intrinsic connection between MAK Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics to the London School represented by JR Firth.

7 June 2021

The Department of Linguistics and Translation, City University of Hong Kong, organised a special Retirement Seminar for Jonathan Webser. The seminar presented the following talks:

• Jonathan Webster: Where is the Art in ‘Verbal Art’? – Seeking a Linguistic Explanation.
• David Butt of Macquarie Universit: The Latent Grammar of Subjectivity – The meaning of the represents test from William James (1902) to Halliday and Webster (2014).
• Annabel Lukin of Macquarie University: Halliday on Ideology.

9 April 2021

Fang, A.C. and Dong, M. (2021). Shell nouns as register-specific discourse devices. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.19059.fan

6 April 2021

Alex Fang was invited by Donghua University and gave a talk on the topic of Language, Corpora and AI. The talk addressed the contribution of corpus linguistics to the rapid development of AI and illustrated the fundamentals of AI to an audience of research students in linguistics. Donghua University is situated in Shanghai and, most notably, is the exclusive designer and provider of space suits for China’s space station project.