Professor Alice Deignan

Profile

I am a researcher and teacher in applied linguistics, with particular interests in lexical approaches to language analysis and teaching, and applications of corpus linguistics to the study of metaphor, metonymy and pragmatics. I have worked as a teacher of English and Teacher Educator in various countries in Europe and Asia. I have also worked as a lexicographer and author for Collins COBUILD.

I am on the editorial boards of the journals 'Metaphor and Symbol', 'Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics' and 'Metaphor and the Social World'.

Research interests

My research interests are in metaphor, genre and register and pragmatics. I use large-scale corpora to investigate issues in these areas, using analytical techniques developed from corpus lexicography. I am interested in the language of mainstream schooling, and the challenges that this presents for some students. My current research project uses corpus linguistic techniques to explore and describe the language of early secondary school in the UK, in collaboration with education professionals at our partner schools in the north of England.

• The linguistic challenges of the transition from primary to secondary school
• Young People, Criticality and Figurative Language

Student education

I teach modules on language description and language skills at undergraduate and Masters level.

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Language Education

Current postgraduate researchers

• Qiuyun Lu
• Peeraya Utsajit
• Chengyan Li
• Airen Zhang
• Rasha Mohsen
• Henry Troy