School of English
Academic & Teaching staff
Dr Fiona Douglas
Lecturer in English Language
+44(0) 113 343 3597
Dr Fiona Douglas MA, PhD, Glasgow
Research Interests
Interests include: corpora, non-standard language varieties, Scottish English and Scots, language and identity.
As a Scot working in Leeds, I am often aware of the differences between my language usage and that of others around me. As a linguist working in the School of English, I am interested in investigating how social and regional differences affect linguistic choice. I have specialist knowledge of Scottish English and Scots (I contributed a chapter entitled 'English in Scotland' to the (2006) Blackwell's Handbook of World Englishes., but am interested in varieties of English generally.
My monograph Scottish Newspapers, Language and Identity (Edinburgh University Press, 2009) focuses on the language of one of the most common and influential text types in Scotland: the national newspapers. Straddling the pre- and post devolution years, this book asks to what extent the use of identifiably Scottish lexical features helps newspapers maintain their distinctive Scottish identities and appeal to their readerships? Based on analysis of a sizeable corpus of newspaper texts, it investigates which Scottish words and phrases the papers use, whereabouts, and asks: Is it a symbolic gesture? Do they all behave in the same way? Have things changed since devolution?
My PhD thesis considered the interaction between language and identity in the Scottish press as evidenced by their often self-conscious and stereotypical use of items of Scottish lexis. The analysis was based on a computerised corpus of national Scottish newspaper texts. I thus also have I have a broadly based interest in corpus linguistics, particularly in the insights corpora can lend to language study. Before coming to Leeds I worked on the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech, planning and building a new on-line electronic corpus for the languages of present-day Scotland.
As a non-technophobe, I am also reasonably persuaded of the use of computers in research and teaching. Applied critically, such tools can provide innovative perspectives on language study and suggest new avenues of research. I also have interests in stylistics and in the analysis of all types of spoken and written discourse.
I am interested in supervising postgraduates who want to work in the following areas: corpora or the use of computers in language research more generally; lexis; language in the media; Scots, Scottish English and other non-standard varieties; the link between language and identity.
Recent Activities
Conference paper at Forum for Research into the Languages of Scotland & Ulster, July 2006
Conference paper at Language in the Media Sept. 2005. Conference paper at Triangle Sept. 2003.
Conference paper at Fourth Language & Politics Symposium, Queen's University Belfast, Sept. 2003.
Conference paper at AHRB Conference on the Scots language in Scotland and Ulster today, Mar. 2003.
Conference paper at Association for Scottish Literary Studies Teachers' Conference, Nov. 2002.
Conference paper at Association for Literary & Linguistic Computing (ALLC) Conference, July 2002 (awarded ALLC bursary).
Work in progress report at International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), May 2002.
In 2006, I was the external assessor for MA COBAL programme in Lodz, Poland.
Teaching
Undergraduate
Language, Literature & Computers
Language, Text and Context
English in Time
English in Space
The Power of Language, The Language of Power
Language of the Media
Postgraduate
Language and Dialect Issues: Past, Present & Future