University of Southampton

The Centre for Applied Language Research was established in 2003 as a focus for postgraduate teaching and research in applied linguistics (language teaching and language education policy), language acquisition and sociolinguistics (language globalisation and language policy studies).

Current and recent research projects

• Losing your tongue: first language attrition in monolingual and bilingual settings
• Speaking the language of the 'enemy': exploring language and identity among Greek-speaking Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus
• Primary modern languages: a longitudinal study of language learning at Key Stage 2
• Traditional pedagogic cultures in foreign language education and the need for multicompetence
• Development of criticality among undergraduates in two academic disciplines
• FLLOC: The Structure of French Interlanguage: A corpus-based study
• Spanish Learner Language Oral Corpus (SPLLOC): Linguistic Development in L2 Spanish: Creation and Analysis of a Learner Corpus
• SS4LL Study Skills for Language Learning: an integrated learner training programme

The Centre for Transnational Studies has an interdisciplinary and cross-national focus. It brings together expertise from across the Humanities and the Social Sciences, particularly from modern languages, linguistics, regional and national identities, literary and cultural studies, film and television studies, and historical, social and political studies. Our projects cut across language barriers and national borders and the Centre’s members have strong links with other national and international centres of research, thus providing an intellectual frame for many externally funded research projects.

The Centre’s teaching and research counter the dominance of English-language models of transnational theory by exploring models drawn from across Europe, Francophone and Lusophone Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Latino culture in the United States.

Current and recent research projects

• Languages at War: Policies and Practices of Language Contacts in Conflict
• Tales of return: the memories and experiences of Spanish returnee migrants from France and Great Britain (1950s-1990s)
• SeFoNe: Dynamics of Physical and Mental Borders in the New Europe
• Diaspora as Social and Cultural Practice: A Study of Transnational Networks across Europe and Africa
• Testing Regimes: Language, Migration and Citizenship - cross national perspectives
• The German language and the future of Europe: ideologies, policies and practices
• EU Changing City Spaces: New Challenges to Cultural Policy in Europe

In addition to these research centres, Modern Languages also has close links with the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non Jewish Relations and is engaged in a number of research networks and informal research clusters focusing on specific themes and methods:

• Life (Hi)stories gathers a group of academics and community-based researchers working in different study areas and disciplines who are interested in life stories. We draw on a wide range of primary sources from oral data collection techniques, such as oral history, language biographies, and ethnography, to written narratives in the form of diaries, memoirs and auto-biographies and other modes of life writing.
• Global Englishes as a Lingua Franca Studies (GES) provides a forum for research into the English language in its 21st Century settings. The research group aims to focus on non-mother tongue Englishes, English as an international Lingua Franca especially within and across East and Southeast Asia, Europe, and Latin America and the implications of these Englishes for higher education.
• The Southampton Migration Research Network (SMRN) aims to identify, establish and expand links to other migration-related research networks in the UK and abroad.
• The Exilio Network: Research into Refugees and other Migrations provides a critical voice for the production, discussion and exchange of ideas pertaining to the study of refugees in twentieth-century Europe.