Dr. Daniel Edmondson

Current positions

Teaching Fellow in English Language

Biography

Daniel is a Teaching Fellow in English Language within the School of Arts, Media & Creative Technology. He is currently teaching modules at all undergraduate levels on English syntax (sentence structure) and morphology (word formation), as well as on Psycholinguistics - the study of the relationship between language, cognition, and the mind. 

Daniel's doctoral research investigated the impact of 'linguistic reclamation' - non-derogatory uses, by members of marginalised communities, of the slurs used by more powerful groups to target them - on the cognitive processing of slur words. His research focused particularly on slurs targeting the LGBTQ+ community, as a community to which Daniel himself belongs, and one with a wide range of British English slurs, many of which are the focus of reclamation projects to varying degrees. It drew on a body of psycholinguistic research on the cognitive processing of taboo language, and used a combination of online surveys, lexical decision tasks, recall tests, and eye-tracking experiments. He is currently in the process of outputting the findings of his research, which provides new evidence about the unconscious, emotional effects of linguistic reclamation; introduces the issue of reclamation to the literature on taboo language processing; and contributes evidence to broader social debates and language policy decisions surrounding the reclamation of slurs.