Call for Papers

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

REMLing 2022

Organised by:

  • The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies, City University of Hong Kong
  • The MIIT Centre of AI-based Linguistic Information Processing, Beihang University, Beijing
  • The ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Sciences, Lancaster University

Sponsored by:

  • The Beijing-Hong Kong University Alliance, Hong Kong

Conference theme

Language as a social phenomenon that mediates and creates meaning has received paramount importance due to its direct bearing on societal issues. At the same time, approaches to language have become continuously ever more multidisciplinary, reflecting not only the advancements of scientific methods but also the multitude of stakeholders, hence perspectives, with vested interest in language. This is especially well evidenced by the world-wide focus on the language of healthcare to investigate the role of language and communication in the fighting against global pandemics such as COVID-19. The landscape of linguistic studies has been immensely broadened and enriched.

The emergent societal requirements have also called for internationally concerted attention to PhD students as an important echelon of language professionals under training to meet the challenges. It is timely to present insights into the range of contemporaneous topics and associated methodologies that mark the necessity of a socially responsive linguistic programme. In this regard, the increasingly important empirical, corpus-based perspective has engendered a wealth of methods and approaches to language in combination with some of the more qualitative methods focused on theories and epistemologies.

Conference organisers

REMLing’22 is jointly organised by the Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications for Language Studies (HCLS) at City University of Hong Kong, the MIIT Centre of AI-based Linguistic Information Processing (CALIP) at Beihang University, Beijing, and the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Sciences (CASS) at Lancaster University. The even is sponsored by the Beijing-HK University Alliance, Hong Kong.

The three research centres are themselves a manifestation of multifaceted perspectives on language. HCLS is fundamentally motivated by the Hallidayan notion of language as a social phenomenon, CALIP is affiliated to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, and CASS is hallmarked by the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK. All three have the common grounding in corpus-based approaches to language.

Conference call

REMLing’22 is calling for submissions from interested PhD candidates in language-related studies in the three organising universities. Papers based on recently submitted theses are equally welcome. Each submission should be in the form of long abstracts of up to three single-sided A4 pages in length.

The submissions are expected to describe the topics and research questions and to elaborate on associated research methods with discussions and, especially, reflections on the impact of the chosen methods on the research outcome. They should present a clear description of the research topic, previous studies focused on methodologies, and the chosen approach representing qualitative, quantitative and hybrid methods. Selected submissions will be invited to expand the description and to present a convincing case of study, through reviews, in-depth discussions and illustrative examples, to engage critically with the research topic under study. Submissions are expected to use a clear structure covering introduction, research questions, methods, results, and discussions. All submissions should have a covering page indicating title of submission, author’s name, and author’s affiliation.

  • CityU submissions should be sent via email to: hcls@cityu.edu.hk
  • Beihang submission should be sent via email to: weiren@buaa.edu.cn
  • Lancaster submissions should be sent via email to: cass@lancaster.ac.uk

Conference publication

Selected papers will be included in a volume of conference proceedings. After the conference, the selected papers will be considered for possible publication in a special issue of an academic journal. The conference organisers will also aim to identify opportunities to publish the papers as chapters in a dedicated book.

Conference deadlines

15 September 2021

Call for papers circulated

31 December 2021

Deadline for submission of abstracts

31 January 2022

Shortlisting completed with comments

Results announced and invitations sent for revisions

20 February 2022

Revised papers received

15–18 March 2022

Symposium conducted via Zoom

Conference Programme Committee


  • Gavin Brooks, Lancaster University
  • Gerhand Budin, University of Vienna
  • Harry Bunt, Tilburg University
  • Min Dong, Beihang University
  • Alex Fang, City University of Hong Kong
  • Dana Gablasova, Lancaster University
  • Christoph Hafner, City University of Hong Kong
  • John Lee, City University of Hong Kong
  • Maocheng Liang, Beihang University
  • Michaela Mahlberg, University of Birmingham
  • Tony McEnery, Lancaster University
  • Wei Ren, Beihang University
  • Elena Semino, Lancaster University
  • Naixing Wei, Beihang University
  • Jackie Yan, City University of Hong Kong

Conference Co-Chairs

  • Alex Chengyu Fang, HCLS, City University of Hong Kong
  • Maocheng Liang, CALIP, Beihang University, Beijing
  • Elena Semino, CASS, Lancaster University