Strands

CTR research strands and activity

CTR aims to promote innovative and interdisciplinary relationships between the academic and professional community to provide an environment which brings together, builds on and further develops existing infrastructures and projects within these related fields. CTR is made up of the following five strands. Members' research frequently cuts across several strands as indicated below:

Language education

This strand explores both the policy and practices relating to the teaching of languages across the range of education provision. Current research includes the following:

Educational cultures, linguistic identity and academic literacies
Classroom methodologies and practices
Teaching and testing materials
Discourse, grammar and context
Young learner pedagogy
Foreign language education policy/implementation

Translation & Interpreting

This strand is concerned with the theory and practice of translation and interpreting. It has close thematic links to culture, intercultural processes, general and applied linguistics and language education. Research interests and activities are located in specialised translation ranging from professionally oriented research in applied translation, text-linguistic analysis of contrastive corpora to interdisciplinary study of the interrelations of translation, culture and literature. A central concern is the interface between translation theory and practitioner impact. Current and projected research can be broadly summarised under the following headings:

Translator and Interpreter training
Textuality, text production and reception
Translation and cultural history
Translation and culture (including terminology)
Translation, media and technology
Subtitling

Literature

This grouping brings together a wide range of interests in Literatures, Cultures and related areas. The group is working within the expanding disciplinary and interdisciplinary concerns of literature. It consolidates the diverse range of research areas and methodologies informing current work but also seeks to identify and promote new initiatives by established members and those new to research. Ongoing research includes:

Comparative literature
Gender Studies
Women's Literature and Feminist Analysis
Post-colonial Literatures and Cultures
Contemporary Autobiography
Modern Philosophy

General Linguistics

The fundamental methodology of General Linguistics links together research in different languages and deals with areas of analysis that underpin much of CTR's work in micro-sociolinguistics, grammar, translation, phonology, discourse and text. It provides a forum that will keep researchers informed about new conceptual developments and where researchers can explore conceptual problems that inevitably arise from the application of linguistic frameworks. Current and projected research can be summarised as follows:

Analysing syntactic and phonological structures in German, English and French, including vernacular forms
Valency (conceptual issues, applied contrastive valency)
Typology, in particular focus constructions

Applied Linguistics

Applied Linguistics is a broad strand within Transcultural research, connecting a very wide-ranging set of disciplines related to language and language usage, society, culture and communication. One of these disciplines is sociolinguistics, in which the group has strong research interests in 'micro' sociolinguistics and 'macro' sociolinguistics or the sociology of language. This last area of research interest, allied with substantial ongoing work in literacies and language policy, forms a particularly strong link with the General Linguistics and Language Education strands. Current research areas include:

Modes of communication, with specific reference to communicative practices in contemporary cultural contexts
Academic (including digital) Literacies in Higher Education and Language
Culture and Identity in the English language classroom
Varieties of French spoken by minority groups such as Beurs in France
Dominant and minority languages; globalisation, language spread, maintenance and shift
Language planning and policy, and relation to language education planning and policy
The application of linguistic models to different text types and languages

Centre for Transcultural Research

Page last updated : : 12 Dec 2011