I teach and research in Stylistics and Narrative Analysis at the University of Birmingham where I am Head of the Division of English Language and Applied Linguistics. I am editor of the Journal of Literary Semantics.
Curriculum Vitae
M. A., Edinburgh University, 1972-1976, first class honours, English Language and Literature. D. Phil., St John's College, Oxford University, 1976-81
1981-1987: Lecturer in English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore.1987-1989: Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Washington, Seattle. 1989-1995: Associate Professor with tenure, Department of English, University of Washington, Seattle. 1996- : Professor of Applied English Linguistics, School of English, University of Birmingham.
Teaching and Administrative Experience
1981-7, National University of Singapore: undergraduate courses taught in Language and Cultural Perception; Narrative Structures; Literary Stylistics, Introduction to Linguistics; Grammar; Phonetics. Supervision of senior undergraduate and M.A. theses in Stylistics, Discourse Analysis, and Pragmatics.
1987-1995, University of Washington: undergraduate courses taught in History of the English Language; English Syntax; Introduction to the Study of Language; and Literary Stylistics; graduate seminars taught on The Nature of Language: History and Theory; Stylistics; Discourse Analysis.
1996-present, Professor of English Language and currently Head of the Division of English Language and Applied Linguistics, at the University of Birmingham.
2009-11, Head of Department of English. Graduate and undergraduate classes taught on Stylistics, Narrative Analysis, and Discourse Analysis. Currently supervising six Ph D students, who are working on:
Membership of Professional Organisations and other Academic Activities:
Host/organizer for the Poetics and Linguistics Association (GB) and International Association of Literary Semantics conferences, Spring 2002.
Member of the Poetics and Linguistics Association of Great Britain; British Association of Applied Linguistics; International Association for the Integrational Study of Language and Communication.
Member of the editorial boards of the journals Language and Literature; Functions of Language; and Language Sciences; of the book series Linguistic Approaches to Literature (Benjamins); and of International Advisory panels for the on-line journal Semiotics (Toronto) and Topics in Language and Literature (Singapore).
Reader/adviser on book proposals and manuscripts for numerous publishers; adviser on tenure/promotion decisions to universities in several countries; external examiner for doctoral theses at, in the recent past, the University of Edinburgh, University of Southern Denmark, Goldsmiths College London, University of Nottingham, and the National University of Singapore. Sometime external examiner of BA and MA programmes at the University of Hong Kong, Lingnan University, University of Wolverhampton, Goldsmiths College London, and Cardiff University.
Chair, International Association of Literary Semantics (since October 2006);
Editor, Journal of Literary Semantics (since 2002).
Member of AHRB (subsequently AHRC) Research Awards Panel 3, for English Language and Literature, September 2001- January 2005.
Member of AHRC College of Research Award Assessors, wef March 2006.
Member of University Appeals Committees.
Member of University's Arts and Social Sciences Ethical Review Committee, from September 2007 (current)
Books:
Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction (London: Routledge, 1988; Second Edition: 2001)
The Stylistics of Fiction: A Literary-Linguistic Approach (London: Routledge, 1990).
Total Speech: An Integrational Linguistic Approach to Language (Durham and London, Duke University Press, 1996).
Language, English Studies and Democracy. Inaugural Lecture delivered on 29 April 1997 in the University of Birmingham. Birmingham: The University of Birmingham School of English, 1997.
Language in Literature: An Introduction to Stylistics. (London: Arnold, 1997).
Narrative Progression in the Short Story: A Corpus Stylistic Approach. (New York and Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2009).
(Editor), Language, Text and Context: Essays in Contextualized Stylistics (London: Routledge, 1992).
(Editor and Introduction), Critical Discourse Analysis: Critical Concepts. An anthology in 4 volumes (London: Routledge, 2002).
Co-editor, co-author of Introduction, with Professor Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard, The Writer's Craft, the Culture's Technology (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006).
(Editor), Language Teaching and Integrational Linguistics (New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2009).
Selected Contributions to Books:
"Compromising Positions: Systemic Linguistics and the Locally-Managed Semiotics of Dialogue'" in D. Birch and L. M. O'Toole, eds., Functions of Style (London: Pinter, 1988), pp.249-60.
"The Language of Press Advertising," in M. Ghadessy, ed., Registers of Written English (London: Pinter, 1988), pp.52-64.
"Analyzing Conversation in Fiction," in R. Carter and P. Simpson, eds., Language, Discourse and Literature (London, Unwin Hyman, 1988), pp.195-211.
"On Relevance Theory," in G. Wolf, ed., New Departures in Linguistics (New York: Garland, 1992), pp.146-162.
"Approaching Hill's 'Of Commerce and Society' through Lexis," in P. Verdonk, ed., Stylistic Approaches to Modern Poetry, Routledge, 1993, pp.49-60.
"Narrative" and "Natural Narratives"; article-length contributions to the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. R. Asher et al., Pergamon and Aberdeen University Press, 1994.
"On Recyclings and Irony," in R. Sell, P. Verdonk, eds., Literature and the New Interdisciplinarity: Poetics, Linguistics, History (Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi, 1994), pp.79-92.
"Discourse style makes viewpoint: The example of Carver's narrator in 'Cathedral'", in J.-J. Weber and P. Verdonk, eds., Stylistic Approaches to Twentieth Century Fiction, Routledge, 1995, pp.126-137.
"The Give and Take of Talk, and Churchill's Cloud Nine," in P. Verdonk, J. Culpeper and M. Short, eds., Exploring the Language of Drama: From Text to Context, London: Routledge, 1998, 142-160.
"New Work on Deixis in Narrative," in W. Grunzweig and A. Solbach, eds., Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context, Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1999, 147-163.
"Towards a Simple Schema of Speech Moves" in M. Coulthard, ed., Working with Dialogue: Papers from the 2nd IADA Conference, Gent: Niemeyer, 2000, 41-53.
"Quasi-Transcriptional Speech: A Compensatory Spokenness in Contemporary Literary Fiction" in T. Bex, M. Burke, and P. Stockwell, eds., Contextualized Stylistics: In Honor of Peter Verdonk, Rodopi: Amsterdam, 2000, 153-172.
On national dialects and Global: The new diglossia in English and its literatures" ed. C. S. Lim et al., Sharing A Commonwealth, Kuala Lumpur: ACLALS in association with the Department of English of the University of Malaya, 2001, pp. 44-66.
"The Language Myth and the Law", in R. Harris, ed., The Language Myth in Western Culture, Curzon Press: Richmond, Surrey, 2001, 159-182.
"An integrational linguistic view of coming into language: Reflexivity and metonymy", in J. Leather and J. van Dam, eds., Ecology of Language Acquisition, Kluwer: Dordrecht, 2002, 123-140.
"Narrative secrets in Alice Munro's stories." In S. Csabi and J. Zerkowitz, eds., Textual Secrets: the message of the medium. Proceedings of the 21st PALA Conference, 2001. Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, 413-418.
"English as the supranational language of human rights?" In C. Mair, ed., The Politics of English as a World Language: New Horizons in Postcolonial Cultural Studies, Rodopi: Amsterdam, 2003.
"On the centrality of Stylistics." In K. Aijmer and B. Olinder, eds., Proceedings from the 8th Nordic Conference on English Studies, Gothenburg Studies in English vol. 84, 33-43, Gothenburg, 2003.
"Secrets, surprises, and gaps in the fiction of Munro and Wolf." In Tale, Novella, Short Story: Currents in Short Fiction, ed. Wolfgang Goertschacher and Holger Klein. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2004, 193-206.
"Graded expectations: on the textual and structural shaping of readers' narrative experience." In J. Pier, ed., The Dynamics of Narrative Form. Studies in Anglo-American Narratology, vol. 4 in the series Narratologia (Berlin; Walter de Gruyter) 2004, 215-236.
'Narrative: Linguistic and Structural Theories', 10,000-word article, in the Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, in 14 vols., ed. K. Brown, Oxford: Elsevier, 2006, vol.8: 459-473.
'Speech and Thought: Representation', 10,000-word article, in the Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, in 14 vols., ed. K. Brown, Oxford: Elsevier, 2006, vol.11: 698-710.
"Narratives in Conversation/ Spoken Narratives in Casual and Formal Settings", 12,000-word commissioned chapter, in J. Swann, ed., The Art of English, Milton Keynes: Open University, 2006.
"Part of the meaning/history of euro: integrational corpus linguistics", in Nigel Love, ed., Language and History: integrationist perspectives, London: Routledge, 2006, 172-187.
"The 'Irresponsibility' of FID", forthcoming in Pekka Tammi & Hannu Tommola (eds.) FREE language INDIRECT translation DISCOURSE narratology: Linguistic, Translatological, and Literary-Theoretical Encounters. Tampere Studies in Language, Translation and Culture. Series A 2. Tampere: Tampere University Press 2006. pp.261-278.
"The Futures of English Studies", to appear in Allan James, ed., Proceedings of the Alpine-Adriatic-Anglistics Conference of November 2005, Univ. of Klagenfurt, 2006.
"Language", in The Cambridge Companion to Narrative (Cambridge: CUP), ed. D. Herman, 2007. 231-244.
"Are Brummies Developing Narratives of European Identity?" In Sharon Millar and John Wilson, eds., The Discourse of Europe: Talk and Text in Everyday Life, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2007. 79-94.
"Evaluating Students/Children's Writing Skills: Just More Grubby Verbal Hygiene? In Ming-yu Tseng, ed., Exploring Language at the Interface . Taipei: Crane Publishing, 2007. 128-146.
"The language of guidance", in Theorizing Narrativity, ed. John Pier and José Angel García. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008: 307-329.
"Around 1990, Corpus Linguistics set in": Combining Systemic Linguistics, Corpus Methods, and Stylistics in the Study of Narrative. In Systemic Functional Linguistics in Use, ed. Nina Nørgaard, Odense Working Papers in Language and Communication vol. 29, 2008, 85-110. ISSN 0906-7612, ISBN: 978-87-90923-47-1. published online at the Syddansk Universitet's website (PDF link)
Enclycopedia entry for the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences, Edited by Patrick Colm Hogan, forthc. 2009.
"Stylistics". Enclycopedia entry for the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences, Edited by Patrick Colm Hogan, forthc. 2008.
"Does lexical patterning guide narrative expectation?" In Narrative, Cognition and Linguistics, ed. Per Krogh Hansen. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, forthc. 2009.
"Assessing written language: just more grubby verbal hygiene?" In Language Teaching and Integrational Linguistics, ed. M. Toolan, New York: Routledge, 2009, 140-155.
"Electronic multimodal narratives and literary form." In Ruth Page, ed., New Perspectives on Narrative and Multimodality, London: Routledge, forthc. 2010, 127--141.
Selected Articles:
"The Functioning of Progressive Verbal Forms in the Narrative of Go Down, Moses," Language and Style, 16:2 (Spring, 1983), 211-230.
"'Pantaloon in Black' in Go Down, Moses: The Functioning of the 'Breathing' Motif," Les Cahiers de la Nouvelle, 2 (January, 1984), 156-66.
"Stanley Fish and the Interpretive Communities of Responding Readers," Dutch Quarterly Review of Anglo-American Letters, January 1984, 66-82.
"Syntactic Styles and Narrative Characterization," Style, 19:1 (Spring, 1985), 78-93.
"Analyzing Fictional Dialogue," Language and Communication, 5:3 (1985), 193-206.
"Taking Hold of Reality: Politics and Style in Nadine Gordimer," VIIth ACLALS Bulletin (1985), 76-88.
"Analyzing Conversation in Fiction," Poetics Today, 8:2 (1987), 393-416.
"Ruling Out Rules in the Analysis of Conversation," a review- article of T. Taylor and D. Cameron's Analyzing Conversation (Pergamon, 1987), Journal of Pragmatics, 13:2 (1989), 251-274.
"Largely For Against Theory," Journal of Literary Semantics,19:3 (1990), 150-166.
"Perspectives on Literal Meaning," Language and Communication, 11:4 (1991), 333-351.
"Token and Value: A Discussion", Occasional Papers in Systemic Linguistics, vol. 6 (1992), 85-97.
"The Significations of Representing Dialect in Writing", Language and Literature, 1:1 (1992), 29-46.
"On Doing Things for Other People," contribution to peer commentary in a special issue of Language and Communication, on D. Cameron et al., 'Ethics, Advocacy, and Empowerment', 13:2 (1993), 137-140.
"A few words on telementation." Language Sciences, 19:1 (1997), 79-91. Issn 0388-0001(95)00029-1.
"What is critical discourse analysis and why are people saying such terrible things about it?" Language and Literature, 6:2 (1997), 83-103. Issn 0963-9470 (199706)
"Reply to Pilkington, MacMahon and Clark". Language and Literature, 7:1 (1998).
"Recentering English: New English and Global." English Today 52 (1997), 13:4, 3-8.
"Don't leave your language alone". Review article on D. Cameron's Verbal Hygiene (1995), in Language and Communication, vol. 18 (1998), 87-99.
"Integrational linguistics, relevance theory, and stylistic explanation: a reply to MacMahon." Language and Literature, 8:3 (1999), 255-268.
"Integrationist linguistics in the context of 20th century theories of language: some connections and projections." Language and Communication, vol. 19 (1999), 97-108..
"'What makes you think you exist?': a speech move schematic and its application to Pinter's The Birthday Party." Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 32 (2000), 177-201.
"Le politiquement correct dans le monde francais". Discourse and Society, vol 14:1 (2003), 69-86.
"Values are Descriptions; or, from Literature to Linguistics and back again by way of Keywords" Belgian Journal of English Language and Literatures (BELL New Series 2), 11-30, 2004.
"Is there a genericness that shapes our ends?" review article on Lohafer's Reading for storyness, Journal of Literary Semantics, 34:1 (2005) 61-68.
Co-editor (by invitation) of a special issue of the European Journal of English Studies (9.2) Aug 2005 on the Cognitive Turn in Literary Studies, co-edited with Jean Jacques Weber (Univ. of Luxembourg).
Introduction, to a special issue of the European Journal of English Studies (9.2) Aug 2005 on the Cognitive Turn in Literary Studies above, co-written with JJ Weber, European Journal of English Studies (9.2), 107-115.
"Joke shop names", Journal of Literary Semantics, 34:2 (2005), 165-179.
"Top keyword abridgements of short stories: a corpus linguistic resource?", Journal of Literary Semantics, 35:2 (2006), 181-194.
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 12:2 (2007), 265–284. Special issue of essays on the work of John Sinclair (ed. R. Moon).
"Narrative Progression in the Short Story: First Steps in a Corpus Stylistic Approach", Narrative , vol 16, no.2 (2008), 105-120.
"Legal definitions". A review-article (8,000 words) on Roy Harris and Christopher Hutton, Definition in Theory and Practice: Language, Lexicography and the Law, and Sanford Schane, Language and the Law. Language and Communication (2009). vol 29, 182-192.
Joint Articles:
with Talbot Taylor, "Recent Trends in Stylistics," Journal of Literary Semantics, 13:1 (1984), 55-75.
with R. Bhaya Nair and R. Carter, "Clines of Metaphoricity, and Creative Metaphors as Situated Risktaking," Journal of Literary Semantics, 17:2 (1988), 20-40.
with G. Dillon et al. [WAUDAG], "Analyzing a Speech Event: The Bush-Rather Exchange", Cultural Anthropology, 4:1 (1989), 73-94. [WAUDAG: the University of Washington Discourse Analysis Group]
with G. Dillon et al. [WAUDAG], "Resisting the Public Discourse of AIDS", Textual Practice, Autumn, 1989, 388-396.
with G. Dillon et al. [WAUDAG], "The Rhetorical Construction of a President", Discourse and Society, 1:2 (1990), 189-200.
with G. Dillon et al. [WAUDAG], "Language and Power in Critical Linguistics", International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 103 (1993).
Book Reviews:
Reviews of works on discourse analysis, stylistics, and linguistic theory, in the following journals: Journal of Literary Semantics; Style; Poetics Today; English Studies; TESOL Quarterly; Language and Literature; Language and Communication; Social Semiotics; Sociolinguistics; and Language in Society.
Review of Geoffrey Sampson, The 'Language Instinct' Debate. Revised edition. London and New York: Continuum, 2005, in Language in Society, 36(4), 622-626, September, 2007.
"Analyzing Conversation in Fiction," British Association of Applied Linguistics Discourse Conference, Hatfield, April 1983.
"Analyzing Fictional Discourse," 7th World Congress of Applied Linguistics, Brussels, August 1984.
"Semantics, Pragmatics and Literal Meaning (Or, What's In a Name?)," MLA Convention, Chicago, 1985.
"The Valorization of Black South African Vernacular in White South African Fiction," MLA Convention, New Orleans, 1988;
"Literal Meaning and Integrationalist Linguistics," Conference on Re-defining Linguistics, Kirksville, Missouri, March, 1989;
"Token and Value: A Discussion", 18th International Systemic Linguistics Conference, Stirling U.K., July 1990;
"Relevance, Repetition and Emergent Grammar: Their Possible Impact on Literary Linguistics", PALA (GB) Annual Conference, Amsterdam, September 1990;
"You can't join a debating society and not speak: on clarity and argumentation within systemic linguistics", Plenary Address to the 21st International Systemic Linguistics Conference, Victoria B.C., July 1993;
"'Character speech': a compensatory spokenness in contemporary fiction", presentation to the Oslo Linguistics Circle, University of Oslo, Norway, September 1994;
"The Principles of Stylistics", Contribution to a graduate seminar on Style and Discourse, University of Oslo, Norway, September 1994;
"New Work on Deixis in Narrative", presentation to the conference on Narrative, Rhetoric and Linguistics, University of Dortmund, 9-11 February, 1996.
"What is critical discourse analysis and why are people saying such terrible things about it?" Plenary talk given to the Poetics and Linguistics Association (Great Britain) Annual Conference, April 1996, at Queen's University, Belfast.
What is critical discourse analysis and why are people saying such terrible things about it? University of Birmingham School of English ELR Staff Seminar, 7 May 1996.
"On Critical Discourse Analysis". Talk given in the Department of English Language and Literature staff seminar series, National University of Singapore, July, 1996.
"What's New in Newspaper Narratives". Talk given to the Department of English, National Technological University, Singapore, July 1996.
"On the situated meaning of Wh- expressions"; a paper presented at the 21st International Systemic-Functional Linguistic Congress, Sydney, Australia, July 15-19, 1996.
"Trying to see grammar differently: On David Brazil's Grammar of Speech". University of Birmingham School of English ELR Staff Seminar, 26 November 1996.
"New developments in Deixis." Cardiff Language Seminar, University of Wales, Cardiff, February, 1997.
"Linguistic Criticism". Tunisian Society for Anglo-Saxon Studies, Sfax, Tunisia, May 1997.
Round Table on Integrational Linguistics, International Congress of Linguists, Paris, July, 1997.
"Quasi-transcriptional speech: a new, compensatory spokenness in contemporary fiction". Plenary lecture to the International Association of Literary Semantics 2nd Biennial Conference, Freiburg, September 1997.
"On national dialects and Global: the new diglossia in English and its literatures." Plenary talk given to the Association of Commonwealth Languages and Literatures Society triennial conference, Kuala Lumpur, December 1998.
"An integrational linguistic approach to language acquisition". Ecology of Language Colloquium, Amsterdam, January 1999.
"On a simple speech-move schema". International Association for Dialogue Analysis, Birmingham, April, 1999.
"Speech moves and discourse analysis". Croatian Association of Applied Linguistics, Opatija, May, 1999.
"Nation languages, local literatures, and international readers: a new indigenization in native English writers?". MAVEN 2: Second International Conference on Major Varieties of English, University of Lincoln, Lincoln UK, September 1999.
"Integrational Linguistics and Systemic Linguistics: Any Common Ground?" staff seminar given to the Department of English Language, University of Liverpool, November 1999.
"Textual coherence and contemporary literary dialogue." Talk to the Department of English, Goldsmiths College, London, November 1999.
"Sociolinguistics, Integrational Linguistics, and the Law of Theft". Paper delivered at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 2000, University of Western England, Bristol, April 2000.
"Narratives of European identity: Everyday stories of Brummie folk, and where Europe fits in". Paper to the EuroConference on Narratives of Everyday Life in Europe. La Londe-les-Maures (Toulon), May 2000.
"Joke Shop-Namings." Paper delivered at the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) annual conference, June 2000, Goldsmiths College, London.
"The Language Myth and the Law." Paper delivered at the International Association for the Integrational Study of Language and Communication inaugural conference (IAISLC), July 2000, Goldsmiths College, London.
"The time-line in the hard-news story: a cross-cultural comparison". Paper given at the British Association of Applied Linguistics annual conference, September 2000, Cambridge, as part of a University of Birmingham colloquium on 'Cross-cultural modes of representation in media discourse'.
"Narrative secrets and surprises in Alice Munro's stories." Paper delivered at the 21st Poetics and Linguistics Association conference, Budapest, April 2001.
"On the Centrality of Stylistics". Invited plenary paper delivered to the Scandinavian Conference on English Language and Literature, Göteborg, Sweden, May 2001.
"English as the supranational language of human rights?". Invited plenary paper delivered to the GNEL/MAVEN Conference on New Varieties of English language and literature, University of Freiburg, 6-9 June, 2001.
"Structure and summarizability in the contemporary novella". Invited paper to the Salzburg Conference on Tale, Novella, Short Story: Currents in Short Fiction, University of Salzburg, November 2001.
"On the Centrality of Stylistics". Plenary Paper, AEDEAN conference, University of Granada, December 2001. Also appears in the CD conference proceedings, 2002.
"Integrationism, corpus linguistics, and writing the euro's history in Britain", paper delivered at the Second Integrational Linguistics International Conference, on 'Integational Linguistics and History', New Orleans, March 23-27, 2002. To appear in a Routledge book of revised papers from the conference, ed. N. Love, in 2004.
"Finding a bridge between corpus linguistics and the reader's processing of literature, the author's making of literature." Plenary paper given at FINSSE (The Second Finnish Conference of English Studies) Tampere 21-23 August 2003.
"Values are Descriptions; or, from Literature to Linguistics and back again by way of Keywords," a plenary lecture at the annual conference of the Belgian National Association for English Language and Literature Studies in Belgium, Ghent, November, 2003.
"Narrative Progression and Reader Expectation", a paper given at the conference on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Short Fiction: Theory and Criticism, University of Salamanca, March 2004.
One-week graduate lecture series in Granada, Spain, in May 2004.
" The language of guidance: narrativity and narrative progression", a paper delivered as part of a panel on Narrativity at the ESSE 7 Conference (European Society for the Study of English), Zaragoza, September 2004.
"Rights and identity: a contemporary preoccupation in socio-legal and literary studies": a talk given to the Department of English, Tampere, Finland, 23 September 2004.
"The irresponsibility of Free Indirect Discourse", a paper presented by me as one of two invited speakers at a one-day colloquium on Free Indirect Discourse, at Tampere, 24 September 2004.
"Whatever next?: Narrative expectation and progression", a talk given to the Department of English and American Studies, University of Murcia, Spain, May 2005.
"The Futures of English Studies", invited plenary paper to the Alpine-Adriatic-Anglistics Conference, November 2005.
"Narrative texture and effect: corpus stylistic evidence", invited plenary paper at O Kosmos Ton Keimenon, A World of Texts, a conference in honour of Professor George Babiniotis, Rector of the Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, May 2006.
"Narrative texture, organisation, and effect: corpus stylistic evidence", invited talk as part of panel on Cognitive and/or Empirical Approaches to the Study of Short Fiction, 9th International Conference on the Short Story, Lisbon, June 2006
"Strange Sense: finding it, making it, expecting it", plenary talk given at the Fourth Conference of the International Association of Literary Semantics, The Jagiellonian University of Kraków, Poland, 12 October 2006.
"Using corpus methods in the analysis of narrative texture", Language Staff-Student Seminar, Aston University, Birmingham, 25 October 2006.
Invited plenary talk to a Conference on Narrative, Cognition, Linguistics, to be hosted by the Center for Narratological Studies, University of Southern Denmark, Kolding, 9-10 November 2006.
Plenary, 'Narrative Progression in the Short Story: A Corpus Stylistic Approach", Society for the Study of Narrative Literature Conference, Washington DC, March 15-18, 2007.
"Alice Munro and Narrative", English Department joint Language and Literature staff seminar, 28 March 2007, University of Birmingham.
Plenary lecture on Multimodal narrative and verbal form, in Narrative and Multimodality Conference, UCE April 2007.
Department of English, University of Kiaohsiung, Taiwan, One-week visiting professorship, May 2007, and two talks in a Workshop on Applied Linguistics.
Visiting professor for ISFC pre-Congress Summer School, Univ. of Southern Denmark, Odense, July 10-14, 2007, giving one-week workshop on narrative progression and corpus stylistics.
"Around 1990, Corpus Linguistics set in." Plenary talk at the 23rd International Congress of Systemic Linguistics, Univ. of Southern Denmark, Odense, July 16-20, 2007.
"Pressures on and from English Legal Terms in Global Contexts", invited talk in the Beijing Forum, University of Beijing, China, 2-4 November 2007
"How Does Literary Language Move Us?" Invited plenary talk at the XIV Susanne Hübner international seminar, "Linguistics and persuasive communication", University of Zaragoza, Spain, 14-17 November 2007.
Invited plenary at the Linguistics & Poetics Conference in honour of the influences of Roman Jakobson, Carlsberg Academy, Copenhagen, 24-25 January 2008.
Corpus stylistics and feeling, Invited workshop participant, International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE), Freiburg, Germany, 12-15 October, 2008.
Stylistics, Repetition and Emotion, Invited Plenary, 2nd International Stylistics Conference, October 20-22, 2008, Shanghai.
Invited plenary, "Literariness and Creativity," 3rd International Roundtable on Discourse Analysis: Discourse and Creativity, City University of Hong Kong, May 7-9, 2009.
"Immersion and emotion in students reading poems and stories: can reader responses and corpus methods converge?" Talk, Department of English, University of Hong Kong, 5 May 2009.
"Literariness, expectation, and the 'right sort' of repetition." Talk, Department of English, Hong Kong Baptist University, 5 May 2009.
Work in Progress and Current Research Interests
Current research work includes