Who am I?

I am an AHRC research officer at Bangor University for which I am currently gathering and analysing the data for the project "What's Hard in German?" I am also an Honorary Research Fellow in Luxembourg Studies at the University of Sheffield after having been a teaching fellow in Luxembourg Studies in 2010-2011.

Background

I grew up in Luxembourg where I studied English Studies (Literature and Linguistics) for two years, which fed into the completion of a BA in English Language at Bangor University. In 2005, I finished an MA at the University of Sheffield and I submitted my PhD thesis in July 2009. My BA and MA dissertations, and my PhD thesis concentrated on Luxembourgish Linguistics, a fantastic niche of research opportunities. You can read my work on the publications page.

Research

From July 2009 to June 2012 I am working on an AHRC/DFG research project carried out by Bangor University and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. This project, "What's Hard in German?" (WHiG) aims to discover difficult formulaic language and grammatical structures in German as produced by learners of German.

I am also carrying out research at the Centre for Luxembourg Studies at the University of Sheffield. First, I am disseminating my PhD work, and second, Kristine Horner and I are analysing YouTube comments within a sociolinguistics/CMC framework. More about my research on the projects page.

Interests

I have a research interest in corpus linguistics, computer-mediated communication (CMC), and Luxembourgish linguistics. I also have an interest in discourse analysis and language ideology.

Designed and Developed by Rowan Hotham-Gough