Welcome to my website!

Qualifications

• PhD in Discourse Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
• MPhil in Linguistics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
• PGCert in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, University of the West of England, UK
• BA in English Language and Linguistics (First Class Honors), University of Cape Coast, Ghana

Research Overview

I am a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of the West of England, where I am also a member of the Bristol Centre for Linguistics. I am an interdisciplinary scholar who investigates how people deploy language in specific spatiotemporal and sociocultural contexts to achieve various aims, including but not limited to identity construction or negotiation, self-promotion, argumentation, othering, resistance and (de)legitimation. I am particularly interested in language and identity, language attitudes and stereotypes, language and diversity, language and the media and language and/in politics.

The main analytical approaches I adopt are (critical) discourse analysis, critical metaphor analysis and discourse-mythological analysis, combining them with corpus methods and insights from history, communication studies and political science. My research has a critical orientation and an emancipatory agenda. Hence, it aims to raise awareness about various complicated social constructs and to illustrate how research on language use can translate into social transformation. My published work draws heavily on comparative and interdisciplinary research frameworks while exploring phenomena in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and North America.

Research Interests

• Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies
• Communication and Media Studies
• Language and Identities
• Language and Diversity
• Language and/in Politics
• On Chinese and Other Asian Population Groups in Ghana

Teaching Areas

• (Critical) Discourse Analysis
• Intercultural Communication
• Language, Culture and Society
• Language and/in Politics
• Research Methods