The way in which language is used to represent reality is a key concern in disciplines that range across the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences. For it is now generally recognised that language is not a neutral medium through which the world can be viewed in a simple, objective, manner, but a mode of representation that is affected by a variety of social, cultural and historical factors. Our language, in other words, is always loaded and always in need of decoding.
Decoding language in order to discover its explicit and implicit meanings is a complex process and one that demands a range of critical skills in the analysis of discourse. Such skills involve careful and detailed examination of text, and the ability to read and interpret signs in their wider context. Whether we are trying to decide why a particular text works on an audience in a particular way, or how the language of aesthetics has been figured historically, or how language helps to construct particular forms of identity, we need to understand precisely how language operates as a means of representation in order to achieve real and significant social effects.
Browse projects from our Showcase events
2025 Showcase
CELCE
A citizen science approach to the assessment of pragmatic language in adolescents
A Corpus-assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of Covid-19 News
A Contrastive Study of Metaphors in Theresa May's and Boris Johnson's Political Discourse
Experiments in Song Translation: a Collaborative Approach, from Translation to Recording
Exploring similarities and differences in how researchers and young people understand key terms in youth mental-health research
Investigating the Language of German Fine Art Market (1900–1945) – Using BERT
Language and Narrativisation in WW2 Memoirs
Leveraging linguistics to enrich and diversify language teaching and learning
The Multilingual Me: Lessons from UK Language Graduates
A Natural History of Language
RefugEAP Case Study
2022 Showcase
Authorship Attribution, Idiolectal Style, and Online Identity in a Specialized Corpus of Najdi Arabic Tweets
Semantic Analysis of Translating Words of the Noun ‘رعب’ in Two Qur’anic Verses
The Common Framework of Reference for Intercultural Digital Literacies
Experiments in Song Translation: A Collaborative Approach, From Translation to Recording
The Translation (or not) & Transcreation of Tintin
Translating Boris Vian
Local coreference and protagonist perspective
Chat buddy: Helping people with autism communicate more easily on chat apps
Representations of social actors in the opening statements of the Derek Chauvin murder trial
Agency and Action: a linguistic analysis of the Downing Street Press conferences
Emergent Izafe Morpheme in Kurdish (Kobani Kurmajni, KK)
