Video: Getting to know our faculty member

Our Assistant Professor Dr Anne Schluter happily shared about her working life at PolyU and our Department, “PolyU is the first place where I am really in a department full of colleagues who are supportive.” Dr Schluter has worked at universities in the US and Turkey before and she is fascinated by the multilingual environment of Hong Kong. She teaches discourse analysis and sociolinguistics in our Department. Check out the video to know what facilities at PolyU impressed her!  

The long road back: Implications of Covid-19 for language and cognition

Recovering from Covid-19 can be a long battle... In this blog of Cambridge University Press, our Prof. Louise Cummings, who is a clinical linguist, explained that new cognitive-linguistic impairment (BrainFog) was reported in people with Long Covid, and their language and cognitive skills have been adversely affected. People who are in recovery from Covid-19 report ‘brain fog’, significant memory loss, and difficulty concentrating. Some also describe having difficulty remembering the names of people and things during conversation. If these impairments become chronic in people with Long Covid, speech-language pathology and neuropsychology investigations will be required. Click here to read it now.

Replay: Emancipatory discourses in action: A feminist critical discourse analysis of Ghanaian feminist blogs

The replay of the webinar by our Dr Mark Nartey "Emancipatory discourses in action: A feminist critical discourse analysis of Ghanaian feminist blogs" is available now. Check it out if you have missed it! Abstract: Even though one of the aims of critical discourse analysis is to demonstrate how social inequality, power abuse and discriminatory practices can be resisted, most studies have centered on the deconstruction of oppression and ideologically driven discrimination rather than the (re)construction of resistance. In this talk, I address this gap by examining the blogposts of Ghanaian feminists using Lazar’s (2007, 2014) feminist critical discourse analysis as an analytic framework. Specifically, I discuss three resistance strategies utilized in the blogposts to criticize systematic gendering of privilege and inequality, and to foreground the voice and agency of Ghanaian/African women: (1) critiquing patriarchy, traditional gender norms and gender oppression, (2) resisting gender stereotypes and rewriting demeaning gender narratives, (3) calling out sexist attitudes and applauding women who resist such behavior. I argue that these strategies contribute to a feminist political critique of gendered social practices and relations aimed at effecting social emancipation and transformation. The talk ends by highlighting how the emancipatory discourse promoted by the blogs can be enhanced as part of a continuous striving for social justice for Ghanaian/African women. This online seminar was jointly organised by the Department of English and Research Centre for Professional Communication in English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Proposing a revised functional classification of pragmatic gestures

Our Dr Renia Lopez’s article "Proposing a revised functional classification of pragmatic gestures" was selected by Lingua of Elsevier as an Editors’ Choice Article! The article proposed a revision of the pragmatic functions of #gestures to simplify their classification by bringing the interactional function under the same umbrella of pragmatic functions. It's free to download until end of Feb 2021: https://bit.ly/36axS6z

Latest issue of newsletter published: ENGLink Summer 2020

What kept us busy this summer? The pandemic has brought a lot of impact on us and yet, we managed to move things online such as classes, seminars, meetings etc.

Communication Around You - Workshop 3: Smart living with language technology

What roles have applied linguists played to the development of language technologies? How can we learn English vocabulary from videos we watch on YouTube with an app?

Hashtag Activism in Hong Kong

Congrats to our Dr Aditi Bhatia and Dr Andrew Ross at University of Sydney for receiving the grant for this joint research! The project will compare the public narrative among Hongkongers opposing the extradition bill against speeches by HK's Chief Executive to reveal any correlations or contradictions amongst both protestor narrative on social media and governmental counter-narrative, in terms of level of emotion or urgency, as well as use of representational metaphors.

New Partnership of IRCAHC Leading to Book Connecting Eastern and Western Medical Perspectives

Eastern and Western medical knowledge can inform each other in the treatment of people in Asia across a wide range of health issues. A new book, Expanding Horizons in Health Communication: An Asian Perspective, brings together health communication scholars from diverse disciplines to present an innovative investigation of Eastern and Western perspectives on healthcare. The book is the result of a partnership between the International Research Centre for the Advancement of Health Communication (IRCAHC) and the STEM Translational Communication Center (STCC) at the University of Florida. Prof Bernadette Watson, director of the IRCAHC, and Prof Janice Krieger, director of the STEM Center, edited the publication. The book is the first of its kind in that it focuses exclusively on health communication research and clinical practice in Asia. The chapters present research from diverse geographic locations, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks to provide a portrait of the expanding horizons of healthcare in Asia. The authors use a range of analytic approaches that include traditional qualitative and quantitative methodologies, as well as cutting-edge computer diagnostics that digitally visualize health interactions across time.  “The goal of this book is to highlight the richness and diversity of health communication research and practice across the globe,” Krieger said. “The authors did an excellent job of describing the relationship between culture and communication practices to promote health and well-being. We hope this book will make a positive contribution to disseminating the vibrant health communication research being conducted in Asia.”

PolyU and University of New South Wales join hands to advance health communication research

We are delighted to announce the research partnership on Health Communication has been launched after the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between our International Research Centre for the Advancement of Health Communication (#IRCAHC) and UNSW Business School's Health@Business Research Network on 22 April! This collaboration signals the beginning of important research initiatives which include the submission of joint research proposals to competitive external funding sources, the building of a joint research publication profile to international peer reviewed journals on health-related topics, and the promotion of the annual IRCAHC symposium through publicity, support in finding keynote speakers and encouraging student attendance (either in person or online). “We are excited at this new research and health communication development between UNSW and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and look forward to making a difference in health communication in Hong Kong and Australia,” said Professor Gavin Schwarz, Director of Health@Business Research Network, UNSW Business School at UNSW Sydney. Professor Bernadette Watson, Director of IRCAHC, said this is an important advance for health communication research and reflects the forward thinking of the two institutions. About IRCAHC: https://www.polyu.edu.hk/engl/ircahc About Health@Business Research Network: https://www.business.unsw.edu.au/.../rese.../health-business