Dr Nick Smith

Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics

• Maxwell 818
• T: 0161 295 6791
• E: n.smith@salford.ac.uk
• SEEK: Research profile

Tuesday 12.30 - 2.30pm (Semester 2, 2012-13)

I came to Salford in September 2007, having previously worked and studied at Lancaster University. My main academic interests are in the use of computer corpora to explore variation and change in the English language. (For the uninitiated, a corpus, plural form corpora, is a sample of electronic texts representing one or more types of language in use.) Most of my investigations have been on changes in structure and style in 20th- and 21st-century standard British and American English. In addition, my work includes dialects/varieties of English in England and around the world. This has involved, for example, collaboration with the NECTE team at Newcastle on Tyneside English, and development of a teaching module on World Englishes. In terms of longer-range historical change in English, I've been working individually and collaboratively on historical pragmatics, grammar/semantics, and spelling variation. Examples of the above work are the co-authored books below, Change in Contemporary English (CUP, 2009) and Corpus Linguistics with BNCweb (Peter Lang, 2008, shortlisted for the BAAL book prize 2009).

I enjoy teaching at all levels, and am currently Programme Leader for the MA in TESOL and Applied Linguistics.

 Undergraduate teaching:

• Corpus Approaches to Language (convenor)
• Change in Contemporary English (convenor)
• World Englishes (convenor)
• Dialects and Dialectology
• Methodology in Linguistics
• Language through Literature
• Theory and Practice

Postgraduate teaching:

• Research Methods in TESOL and Applied Linguistics (convenor)
• Language Structure and Use

PhD supervision:

I am interested in supervising students whose interests include any of the following: corpus linguistics; language change; new media language; regional and social variation in English, including World Englishes. I am currently supervising two PhD students: Sami Al-Ghouzi (a corpus investigation of the use of English Discourse markers by Saudi learners and English native speakers) and Lee Yi-Jing (discourses and representations of skin whitening in Taiwan).

• corpus linguistics
• language change
• regional and social variation in English including World Englishes
• new media language

MA and PhD in Linguistics (Lancaster University)

Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice

Communications Officer for the Corpus SIG of the British Association for Applied Linguistics http://www.baal.org.uk/sig_corp_ling.html

Member of International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE)

Member of the Philological Society

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Member of the Scientific Committee for ‘Englishes Today: theoretical and methodological issues’ (Vigo 2013), and member of the Organization Committee for Corpus Linguistics 2013 (Lancaster 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011) and ICAME 2009.

Reviewer/referee for English Language and Linguistics, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, Corpora, Journal of Pragmatics.

Smith, N. and G. Leech. Forthcoming 2013. Verb structures in twentieth-century British English. In B. Aarts, J. Close, G. Leech and S. Wallis (eds.) The verb phrase in English: investigating recent language change with corpora. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  

Broccias, C. and N. Smith. 2010. Same time, across time: Simultaneity clauses from Late Modern to Present-Day English. English Language and Linguistics 14.3: 347–371.

Celle, A. and N. Smith. 2010. Beyond aspect: Will be -ing and shall be -ing. English Language and Linguistics 14.2: 239–269.

Leech, G., C. Mair, M. Hundt, and N. Smith. 2009. Change in Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hoffmann, S., S. Evert, N. Smith, D. Lee and Y. Berglund-Prytz. 2008. Corpus Linguistics with BNCweb - A Practical Guide. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

Smith, N., P. Rayson and S. Hoffmann. 2008. Corpus tools and methods, today and tomorrow: Incorporating linguists’ manual annotations. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 23:2, 163-180.

Beal, J., K. Corrigan, N. Smith and P. Rayson. 2007. Writing the vernacular: Transcribing and tagging the Newcastle Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English. Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English, vol. 1. 

Smith, N. 2003. Changes in the modals and semi–modals of strong obligation and epistemic necessity in recent British English. In R. Facchinetti, M. Krug and F. Palmer (eds.) Modality in Contemporary English. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 241-267.