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News & Events

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.