Current research projects in English Linguistics

  • Assessment of oral proficiency in English (Liliann Byman Frisén). Doctoral thesis project 2020-2025

    The doctoral thesis project looks at the assessment of oral proficiency in English in Swedish compulsory school. A central research issue is how oral proficiency is understood and interpreted by those who assess and grade the national test in English in year 6 and year 9, and how this relates to knowledge and policy on oral proficiency in a second language.
     

  • Intra-language variability of path framing and manner encoding (Rickad Nilsson) Doctoral thesis 2022 – 2027.

    This PhD project explores how path of motion is framed in English, Spanish and Swedish and its relation to the coding of manner of motion. More specifically, the focus of the project is on the variability of path of motion expressions allowed within the languages and the aim is to enable a cross-linguistic comparison. One of the central hypotheses is that some languages have more entrenched patterns than others when it comes to how motion is encoded, which may have consequences for the strength of mental schemas.

  • Investigating predatory publishing in political science: a corpus-based approach (Ying Wang, Josep Soler, Stockholm University), 2018-

    This project aims to contribute to the complex yet under-represented research area of predatory practices in scholarly publication and research communication. Currently, we are using corpus linguistics methods (e.g., keywords, lexical bundles, syntactic complexity) to provide empirical evidence on disciplinary writing that distinguishes research articles published in a predatory journal in the field of political science from those published in a prestigious outlet. In addition, we are also interested in analysing spam emails sent out by predatory publishers to uncover features (linguistic and social) that help make the existence of predatory publishing possible and viable. In the future, the research will be expanded by including more disciplines and an additional layer of analysis, namely sociolinguistic and language ideological analysis.
     
  • Listening to the voices of teachers: Multilingualism and inclusive education across borders (Andrea Schalley). 2017–
    The project is part of CSL - Center for Language and Literature Education

    This project carries out a transnational, comparative study on pre-primary and primary school teacher’s attitudes, beliefs and knowledge on multilingualism across countries. Since teachers form the crucial link between top-down policies and bottom-up practices, their attitudes, beliefs and knowledge on multilingualism are critical factors to achieving inclusive education. Currently, researchers from 8 countries are involved (France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom). In Sweden, we are collaborating with colleagues from Umeå, Linnaeus and Dalarna Universities.
     
  • Non-apologies: The reception of public apologies in mediated interaction in the era of #MeToo (Erica Sandlund, Peter Wikström). Funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond [P19-0213:1]. 2020-2023.

    In this project, we will identify and analyze discursive practices of rejecting public apologies in the wake of the #MeToo movement, in both journalistic mediated interaction and informal social media interaction. Such practices are analyzed in terms of how the discourse participants practice ‘folk linguistics’, negotiating notions of what constitutes a ‘real’ apology. Further, the practices are analyzed as a way of doing ‘everyday’ political participation in the social media context.
    More information is available at kau.se/en/non-apoligies
     

  • Predictors of English language learning outcomes in Swedish secondary school: How to overcome the large differences in students’ goal attainment as experienced by many English teachers. (Andrea Schalley, Marika Kjellén, Marie Tåqvist in collaboration with teachers from four schools in Värmland). The project is part of ULF. 2023-2024.

    The goal of the project is to identify teaching methods that provide support to all students in a heterogeneous classroom and facilitate their attainment of intended learning outcomes, while also helping them retain or develop both their sense of self-efficacy in language learning and their enjoyment of it.
    This is an ULF project, funded by ULF, CSL, and LUN, and co-funded by the municipalities involved.

  • Semantic Typology: Social Cognition across Languages (Andrea Schalley)
    Funded by the Australian Research Council, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. 2016–2022.

    This project investigates how social cognition is coded in different linguistic structures across languages. In order to do so, we create a parallel corpus for 24 languages that focuses on functional categories relevant to the social and psychological facts that place people within an interconnected social context and allows them to interact with one another. More information on the project website https://scopicproject.wordpress.com/
     
  • Swedish Learner Corpus of English (Henrik Kaatari (project leader), University of Gävle, Ying Wang, Tove Larsson, Uppsala University/Northern Arizona University, Pia Sundqvist, University of Oslo), 2021- 

    This project aims to compile a corpus of texts written by secondary school students (years 7–12) in Sweden. The corpus also contains data on the students’ exposure to Extramural English (EE) activities, allowing us to examine the impact of EE activities on learners’ L2 writing development. We use a cross-sectional design and measures of linguistic complexity to operationalize and study writing development from three complementary perspectives: lexis (individual words), phraseology (word combinations), and grammar. 
     

  • TELL-ability: Storytelling as life skill and interactional competence in second language education (Erica Sandlund)
    The TELL-ability project (2023 – 2026) is funded by the Swedish Research Council [Reg. no 2022-02920] and engages four senior researchers and a research assistant from English, Swedish as a second language, and Comparative Literature.

    Research on oral storytelling as a specific interactional competence in a second language is carried out in three work packages in year 9 of compulsory school, encompassing teachers’ views, learner views, and an intervention study where different oral narrative tasks are implemented in classrooms. More information is available at https://www.kau.se/tellability

  • The Swedish R-work: Uses and negotiations of the terms ras and racism in contemporary Swedish online and social media discourse (Tobias Hübinette (principal investigator) and Peter Wikström) Swedish Research Council (reg. no 2019-03291). 2020-

    In this project, the researchers conduct case studies of how the terms “race” and “racism” are understood and contested in various public contexts in Swedish media and social media. The project combines critical race theory with linguistic and discourse analytic methods to shed light empirically on how societal changes and political ideologies affect and are reflected in negotiations of controversial concepts.

  • STAGE: STarting AGe and Extramural English (Erica Sandlund)

    The STAGE project is run from the University of Oslo (PI: Professor Pia Sundqvist). The project (2021 – 2025) is funded by the Research Council of Norway, and compares learners’ proficiency in English in Norway and Flanders – two input-rich contexts in terms of extramural English, but with different starting ages for formal instruction in English. The comparative analyses encompass a range of language abilities and at three stages of compulsory school. Furthermore, the project also studies learner beliefs. Sandlund is responsible for a work package on interactional competence. More information on the project website https://www.uv.uio.no/ils/english/research/projects/stage/

  • Virtual worlds and semantic modelling (Andrea Schalley, Anton Benz, Leibniz Centre of General Linguistics, Berlin, Torgrim Solstad, Bielefeld University, Oliver Bott, Bielefeld University), 2021-

    The project investigates how basic actions are conceptualised and linguistically expressed across languages. We in particular ask which conceptual dimensions distinguish verbal meanings and which ones are irrelevant. In order to investigate this experimentally, we use virtual world animations as stimuli, allowing us to systematically and in a controlled way manipulate different dimensions.