Jeffrey Kallen

Biography

MAIN AREAS OF RESEARCH: LANGUAGE IN IRELAND (especially Hiberno-English, but considering also Irish and Ulster Scots, in structural, dialectal, sociolinguistic, and historical perspectives) LINGUISTICS (especially sociolinguistics; dialectology; bilingualism; phonology; historical linguistics; language acquisition; general linguistics; comparative syntax) ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION (with a focus on discourse analysis, NARRATIVE, AND SEMIOTICS) ETHNIC STUDIES (particularly the relationships among language, expressive culture, and ethnicity). MAIN RESEARCH ACTIVITIES: INTERNATIONAL CORPUS OF ENGLISH (ICE) PROJECT, INITIATED AT THE SURVEY OF ENGLISH USAGE by Professor Sidney Greenbaum, University College London. Two projects in progress: (1) to analyse and make available the ICE-Ireland corpus of approximately 1 million words of standard Irish English (spoken and written) compiled according to ICE protocols for national corpora, (2) prosodic and pragmatic annotation of the spoken ICE-Ireland corpus. Analysis of data and provision of electronic resources in progress. CONVERGENCE AND DIVERGENCE OF SOCIAL DIALECTS IN A CHANGING EUROPE, research network sponsored by the European Science Foundation, directed by Professor Frans Hinskens (Leipzig) and Professor Peter Auer (Freiburg). As a member of the international steering committee, I was responsible for planning and participation in the network's international symposia, publications, and graduate-level summer school in Málaga (1998). Details of relevant publications given below; activities continue through the International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE). LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN IN BRITTANY, IRELAND, SCOTLAND AND WALES, research project funded by the Commission of the European Union and directed by Dr. Janig Stephens, University of Wales Institute. As director of the Irish component, I was responsible for arranging collection, transcription, and analysis of Irish-language data. The Irish project provided co-sponsorship of a special session on the acquisition of the Celtic languages at the 3rd Celtic Linguistics Conference, held in University College Dublin (2000), proceedings of which were published in the Journal of Celtic Language Learning. FUTURE PLANS: Together with colleagues from around the world, I have recently begun research on the LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE, i.e., the use of languages in visible, public spaces where questions of ethnolinguistic vitality, language policy, and linguistic representation come to the fore. I recently participated in an international symposium on the subject, and further plans are in train for presentations in 2006 and beyond. The ICE-Ireland project entails a commitment to publication of a book in the ICE handbook series on sociolinguistic issues in the standard English of Ireland, in addition to other related papers and presentations. I also seek to maintain a varied programme of publication and public presentation across the range of subject areas indicated above.

Research Interest

HIBERNO-ENGLISH; Linguistics