Linguistics Topic of Upcoming UA Symposium

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — “Exploring the Boundaries and Applications of Corpus Linguistics,” a symposium in the department of English at The University of Alabama, will be Friday, April 15 through Sunday, April 17 in UA’s Bidgood Hall.

Forty-six presenters from such countries as Belgium, China, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States will present papers on corpus linguistics in language teaching, literary analysis, discourse analysis and other areas.

Presentations will cover several languages in addition to English, including Spanish, French/Italian, Chinese, Russian and Japanese. The first keynote speech, at 7:15 p.m. Friday, April 15, is “Corpus Stylistics: What a Corpus Approach Can Tell Us About Fictional Worlds,” by Dr. Michaela Mahlberg, associate professor of the University of Nottingham in Britain.

Sponsors include UA’s Office of the Vice President for Research; the Office of Associate Provost for International Education & Global Outreach; the College of Arts and Sciences; the Graduate School; the diversity committee of the College of Arts and Sciences; the department of modern languages and classics; John Benjamins; and Taylor and Frances Routledge.

All interested persons are invited, and registration is free.

Because the symposium is concurrent with UA’s A Day, registration on Saturday, April 16 is recommended so organizers can arrange for parking. For more information about the symposium including its program, visit the symposium’s webpage at http://www.as.ua.edu/english/sym2011index.html or contact Dr. Dilin Liu, professor of English linguistics, at dliu@as.ua.edu.

The department of English is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.