The School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics comprises several areas whose component disciplines bear in common the subject of language as a formative medium of culture. Classes are taught in Asian Languages and Cultures (Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian), European Languages and Cultures (German, French and Italian), and Linguistics, and research is conducted in and among all of these areas. Our research areas embrace literature (medieval to modern) of the respective languages, film, literary translation, language teaching, socio-linguistics, and applied linguistics.
Staff produce many articles and books published in internationally recognised presses. The results of completed and ongoing research projects are also presented at national and international conferences.
Staff have been successful in attracting major research grants from Australian and international funding bodies including Australia Research Council Large Grants and Small Grants, Carrick, AusAID, AIATSIS, and CAUT grants.
Within the School research projects are pursued both on an individual basis, and through collaboration between applied linguistics specialists and some of the language and culture staff. The principal areas of research activity are:
- semantics
- Australian Aboriginal languages
- Asian languages
- language typology and description
- pidgins and creoles
- phonology and pronunciation
- Language pedagogy theory and practice
- European literature and drama
- Digital archiving of Asian-Pacific region language and music heritage recordings
- Asian literature and performing arts
- Asian academic language practices
- Asian cultural politics
Chinese
Chinese literature and cultural studies, gender and sexuality in traditional China, literary Chinese, distance language learning, LOTE pedagogy and curriculum development for Chinese, intercultural communication involving speakers and learners in Chinese.
French
Research strengths are in 17th century literature, especially drama, and in 19th and 20th century prose fiction.
German
Research strengths are in nineteenth and twentieth century drama (especially Büchner and Brecht); modern German novel, especially Grass, Wolf, Mann and “Vertreibungsliteratur”; women’s literature in German-speaking countries and film.
Indonesian
Research interests include modernisation issues in Indonesian society and culture, Indonesian literature and literary history, cultural politics, nationalist history, Islam in Indonesia, Indonesian applied linguistics and Indonesian Communism.
Italian
Research interests include the language and literature of Italian migrants in Australia; 19th and 20th century Italian literature; 14th century Italian literature; Renaissance literature; 20th century Women’s literature and advanced/ individualized programs in Italian language acquisition.
Japanese
Research interests include Second Language Acquisition, Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), JFL Pedagogy, historical and modern-day Japanese performance culture and music, cross-cultural communications, Language and Culture in contact and Japanese society and culture.
Linguistics
Research interests include language description and linguistic typology, cross-linguistic semantics, ethnopragmatics, cognitive linguistics, second language acquisition, bilingualism, pronunciation teaching, speech perception, classification systems, pidgin and creole languages, language gender and power, forensic linguistics and literacy. Specific languages of specialisation include Ngan’gityemerri (Aboriginal), Gunwin languages (Aboriginal), Aboriginal English, Hindi, Tamil, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Malay (Bahasa Melayu), Fijian and Melanesian Pidgin.
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