Linguistics at Northumbria

Linguistics at Northumbria covers a very broad range of applied and theoretical areas, using a wide range of empirical techniques.

Our areas of expertise include:

• cognitive linguistics
• first and second language acquisition
• forensic linguistics
• language evolution and change
• language in education
• language teaching
• language variation
• medical communication
• pragmatics
• sociolinguistics
• stylistics
• TESOL

Our current research includes projects which focus on:

• identity issues facing Native Speaking English Teachers living and working abroad
• ways of supporting learners of English as a second language with low levels of literacy
• the role of metaphor in maths education
• the role of pragmatic inference in the production, interpretation and evaluation of texts
• how accent and dialect diversity can be used as a resource in teaching
• implicit and explicit attitudes to language variation
• the historical development of yes and other positive and negative markers in English 
• pragmatics and language change
• the evolution of language
• the relationship between musical perception and the perception of speech prosody
• metaphor and time
• critical pedagogy and language teaching
• individual differences in language processing
• discursive practices in Dark Web criminal activities
• the language of police interviews

For further information on our researchers and their projects, see our staff profile pages:

• Billy Clark
• Sarah Duffy
• Andrew Feeney
• Graham Hall
• Mimi Huang
• Alex Leung
• Nicci MacLeod
• Robert McKenzie
• Rola Naeb
• James Street
• Phillip Wallage

For general queries about linguistics at Northumbria, contact Billy Clark:

billy.clark@northumbria.ac.uk