Language and Professional Communication | Department of English and Communication

This research profile focuses on all areas relating to Language and Professional Communication, including lexico-grammatical, discourse, genre and pragmatic studies in professional contexts, organizational communication, intercultural and professional communicative competencies, cultural identities in the multilingual and multicultural workplaces, and English for specific purposes.

(1) Healthcare Communication

Prof. Louise Cummings*

(Speech and Language Therapy)

Prof. Bernadette Watson*

(Application of a Language and Social Psychology perspective to Health Communication, Intergroup Communication Across Cultures in Health Communication)

Prof. Dennis Tay*

(Mental health and psychotherapy)

Prof. Stefano Occhipinti*

(Stigma, Health beliefs, Cancer, Culture and Health)

(2) Political Communication

Prof. Kathleen Ahrens*

(Language and Politics, Corpus Linguistics)

Prof. Stefano Occhipinti*

(Political ideology and naturalness beliefs)

Dr Aditi Bhatia*

(Critical Discourse Analysis, language and politics/political discourse)

Dr Anne Schluter

(Populist discourse)

(3) Professional Communication

Prof. Eric Friginal*

(Aviation English, Workplace Communication and Call Centres)

Prof. Hans Ladegaard*

(Leadership & Gender, Intercultural Communication in the workplace)

Prof. Bernadette Watson*

(Interprofessional communication in health)

Dr Victor Ho*

(Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis)

(4) Scholarly Communication

Prof. Guangwei Hu*

(Academic Discourse, Research Ethics, Scholarly Publishing)

*All faculty members with a star next to their name are potential Principal Supervisors for the 2023-24 intake of RPg students.

Research Highlights

Author	Title	Year	Research type
Burgers, C. & Ahrens, K.	Change in metaphorical framing over time: Metaphors of trade in 225 years of State of the Union addresses (1790-2014). Applied Linguistics, 41(2), 260-279.	2020	Journal Article
Chevalier, B. A. M., Watson, B. M., Barras, M. A., & Cottrell, W. N.	Assessing Communication Behaviours of Hospital Pharmacists: How Well Do the Perspectives of Pharmacists, Patients, and an Independent Observer Align? Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 39(5–6), 626–652. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X20909867	2020	Journal Article
Cummings, L.	Language in Dementia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.	2020	Book
Ladegaard, H. J.	Constructing the cultural other: Prejudice and stereotyping. In J. Jackson (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication (2nd ed., pp. 191-203). Routledge.	2020	Book Chapter
Loh, J., & Hu, G.	Teacher education for a knowledge-based economy: The Singaporean case. In L. Lefty, & J. W. Fraser (Eds.), Teaching the world’s teachers (pp. 226-248). John's Hopkins University Press.	2020	Book Chapter