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The Linguistic and Applied Linguistics Graduate Research Program works with our students to provide a deep, scientifically informed knowledge of how language is used and structured. The tools you'll acquire naturally augment those of anthropology, psychology, law, computer science and other complementary disciplines.
Find a supervisor via name, program area, or keyword search.
Lucien Brown Korean language; pragmatics; multimodality; sociocultural language learning
Kate Burridge Germanic languages; grammatical change; linguistic taboo
Alice Gaby Australian Aboriginal languages; language, culture and cognition; linguistic typology
Jim Hlavac Translation and interpreting studies; contact linguistics; sociolinguistics
Hui Huang Chinese Studies; sociolinguistics; second language acquisition
Shimako Iwasaki Japanese studies; conversation analysis; intercultural communication
Naomi Kurata Japanese studies; language and identity; language learning and teaching
Howard Manns Indonesian languages and cultures; language variation and change; language and identity
Anna Margetts Language documentation and description; narrative and reference tracking; valence and transitivity
Satoshi Nambu Language variation and change, sociolinguistics, syntax, psycholinguistics
Robyn Spence-Brown Japanese studies; second language acquisition and language teaching; language education policy
Louisa Willoughby Sign language linguistics; migrant languages; language and adolescence
Zhichang Xu World Englishes; English as a Lingua Franca; intercultural education
Supervisors in our program specialise in topics which include language policy, second language acquisition and teaching, study abroad, out of class learning, second language pragmatics, language learners’ motivation and identity, and heritage language maintenance and transmission.
Lucien Brown
Jim Hlavac
Hui Huang
Naomi Kurata
Yacinta Kurniasih
Howard Manns
Satoshi Nambu
Robyn Spence-Brown
Louisa Willoughby
The LAL HDR Program specialises in the Indigenous languages of Australia and the region, particularly those of the Austronesian language family. Our supervisors are experienced in linguistic fieldwork, new methodologies for language elicitation, analysis and description, and the support of community language researchers wishing to reclaim their community’s language knowledge.
John Bradley
Alice Gaby
Yacinta Kurniasih
Anna Margetts
Our supervisors explore the consequences of globalisation for language, considering the dynamics of multilingualism, translanguaging, language contact and language shift in international and intercultural encounters.
Kate Burridge
Shimako Iwasaki
Howard Manns
Louisa Willoughby
Zhichang Xu
As with all areas of our lives, digital technology has had a huge impact on how we use language and how we study it. Digital discourse explores the situatedness of multimodal communication, including language, across online and offline spaces, with a core interest in how users navigate and negotiate technological and social affordances. Corpus linguistics uses the capabilities of computers to analyse large bodies of language data, looking for patterns which are not obvious to a human eye.
Staff in our program explore the history, forms and use of Englishes around the world. They detail the ways in which English has been shaped by the lives and movements of its speakers, and the implications of the global spread of the English language for intercultural communication.
Kate Burridge
Howard Manns
Zhichang Xu
LAL researchers study pragmatics within and between a wide variety of spoken and signed languages, and with a particular focus on multimodal communication. Our supervisors are experienced in a wide variety of methods, including Conversation Analysis, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Ethnomethodology, Linguistic Anthropology and Experimental Pragmatics and have expertise in the transcription and analysis and archiving of multimodal data.
Lucien Brown
Alice Gaby
Jim Hlavac
Shimako Iwasaki
Howard Manns
Louisa Willoughby
Zhichang Xu
Our supervisors are interested in the cultural contexts within which languages are spoken. They explore the extent to which language is shaped by and / or replicates the culture of its speakers. They question how speakers draw on the structures provided by their language in order to create meaning and categorise the world around them.
