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Prof. Lydia Catedral
Assistant Professor
- HHB932
- +852 2766 4364
- lydia.catedral@polyu.edu.hk
ORCID ID
SCOPUS ID
Google Scholar
Research GateResearch Overview
Lydia Catedral is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Communication at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her sociolinguistic research focuses on the relationship between language and space-time, particularly in the context of transnational migration. Her first co-authored book is Chronotopes and Migration: Language, Social Imagination and Behavior. Her current research on migrant domestic workers emerges from her solidarity work with grassroots organizations led by migrant workers in and beyond Hong Kong.
Academic and Professional Experience
- Assistant Professor, Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2024-present)
- Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics and Translation, City University of Hong Kong (2018-2024)
Teaching Areas
- Social approaches to language
- Analyzing discourse and semiosis
Research Interests
Research Output
- Karimzad, K. & Catedral, L. (2021). Chronotopes and migration: A sociocultural approach to language, identity, time and space. Abingdon: Routledge.
- Liang, Yuyan & Catedral, L. (in press) Between silence and voicing out: Migrant organizations navigating online and offline realities. Submitted to Language in Society.
- Catedral, L. (June 2025). “Say the way you experience it”: Public discourse on migrant domestic work across unequal cultures of knowledge production. Language and Intercultural Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2025.2508185
- Liang, X., & Catedral, L. (January 2025). “Calming my heartbeat to enjoy the show”: the social-indexical meanings of in-yer-face theater recontextualized in China. Multilingua, 44 (2), 263-287. https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2024-0081]
- Catedral, L. & Djuraeva, M. (October 2022). Whose voice matters: Chronotopic positionings and the dialogic inclusion of marginalized stakeholders in critical applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 44(3), 420-441. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amac052
- Catedral, L. (November 2022). (Re)chronotopizing the pandemic: Migrant domestic workers’ calls for social change. Language, Culture and Society, 4(2), 136-161. https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.22001.cat
- Karimzad, F. & Catedral, L. (2022). Chronotopic resolution, embodied subjectivity, and collective learning: A sociolinguistic theory of survival. Language, Culture and Society, 4(2), 189-217. https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.22005.kar
- Yip, V. & Catedral, L. (July 2021). Perceiving (non)standardness and the indexicality of new immigrant Cantonese in Hong Kong. Language and Communication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2021.04.004
- Catedral, L. (February 2021). The (im)possibility of sociolinguistic hybridity: Power and scaling in post-soviet, transnational life. Journal of Sociolinguistics. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12461
- Djuraeva, M. & Catedral, L. (January 2020). Habitus and imagined ideals: Attending to (un)consciousness in discourses of (non)nativeness. International Multilingual Research Journal, 14(3), 270-285. https://doi.org/10.1080/19313152.2020.1714159
- Karimzad, F. & Catedral, L. (December 2018). Mobile (dis)connection: New technology and rechronotopized images of the homeland. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 28(3), 293-312. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12198
- Terkourafi, M., Catedral, L., Haider, I., Karimzad, F., Melgares, J., Mostacero, C., Nelson, J., Weissman, B. (July 2018). Uncivil Twitter: A sociopragmatic analysis. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 6(1), 26-57. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00002.ter
- Catedral, L. (May 2018). ‘That’s not the kind of church we are’: Heteroglossic ambiguity and religious identity in contexts of LGB+ exclusion. Language and Communication, 60, 108-119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2018.02.007
- Catedral, L. & Djuraeva, M. (February 2018). Language ideologies and (im)moral images of personhood in multilingual family language planning. Language Policy, 17(4), 501-522. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-018-9455-9
- Karimzad & Catedral, L. (February 2018) “No we don’t mix languages”: Ideological power and the chronotopic organization of ethnolinguistic identities. Language in Society, 47(1), 89-113. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404517000781
- Catedral, L. (January 2018). Discursive scaling: Moral stability and neoliberal dominance in the narratives of transnational migrant women. Discourse and Society, 29(1), 23-42. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926517726111
- Catedral, L. (March 2017). Uzbek re-modeled: Russian loanwords in post-soviet Uzbek media. The Journal of Language and Politics, 16(2), 313-333. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.15025.cat
- Karimzad, F. & Catedral, L. (in press). Dialog across spatiotemporal imaginaries: Unsettling language, reimagining transnationalism, and materializing care. To appear in J. Park & B. Bolander (Eds.), Language and Transnationalism. Oxford University Press.
- Karimzad, K. & Catedral, L. (2022). Navigating topics and creating research questions. Chapter 1, Research Methods in Linguistic Anthropology. (eds.) Sabina Perrino & Sonya Pritzker. Bloomsbury: Bloomsbury Academic.
Others
COMPETITIVE RESEARCH GRANTS
- Research Grants Council General Research Fund, Expanding discourse analytic applications through participation in grassroots advocacy (1 January 2025 - 31 December 2027), Principle Investigator, HKD753,758, Ongoing.
- Research Grants Council General Research Fund, Caring transnationally: A spatiotemporal model of moral discourse and action, (1 January 2023 - 31 May 2026), Principal Investigator, HKD335,840, Ongoing.
- Research Grants Council Early Career Scheme, “Public” or “Private” Labor? A Discourse Analytic Comparison of Regulations on Women’s Transnational Domestic Work, (1 January 2021 - 31 December 2023), Principal Investigator, HKD313,398, Completed.
INTERNAL RESEARCH GRANTS
- The Department of English and Communication Departmental Earnings, MICROLAB, (28 May 2025- 26 May 2026), Principal Investigator, HKD200,000, Ongoing.
- The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Start-up funds for new recruits, The functions and constraints of English in migrants’ transnational solidarity, (15 February 2025 - 14 June 2027), Principal Investigator, HKD499,895, Ongoing.
- City University of Hong Kong Start-up Grant for New Faculty, Multilingualism and Employment among Ethnic Minorities in Hong Kong, (Approved on March 3, 2019 until December 15, 2022), Principal Investigator, HKD193,679, Completed.
Esteem Measures
- Editorial Board Member, Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, October 2022-
- Editorial Board Member, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, August 2022-December 2024
- Board Member, Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants, 8 May 2023 – present
- Certificate for support and solidarity to Overseas Filipino Workers (UNIFIL-Migrante-HK, United Filipinos in Hong Kong, 2023)
- Finalist for First Book Award (American Association for Applied Linguistics, 2023)
