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Professor Jonathan Culpeper

Professor of English Language and Linguistics

Degree: BA (Lancaster), PhD (Lancaster)

Associated research centres and groups: Pragmatics and Stylistics Research Group (PaSTY), University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language (UCREL)

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Research Interests

Pragmatics

Most of my current work belongs to the field of pragmatics. Within present-day pragmatics, I have a particular research interest in linguistic politeness, focusing on the social dynamics of interaction. My work has concentrated on the opposite of politeness: impoliteness. My article Towards an Anatomy of Impoliteness (1996, Journal of Pragmatics), outlining a framework for analyzing highly confrontational interaction, is my most cited publication to-date. I recently completed a three-year ESRC Fellowship,designed to push forward this research. My monograph, Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence (2011, CUP),was the main output. Glimpses of my work can be seen in my impoliteness website.

One important strand of my research is centredon historical pragmatics, an area which seeks to apply the theories of pragmatics to historical texts and language change. I recently completed the monograph Early Modern English dialogues: Spoken interaction as writing (with Prof. Merja Kytö, Uppsala University ) (2010; CUP). This book investigates historical 'spoken' face-to-face interaction, as recorded in speech-related material (e.g. trial proceedings). It is based on a large corpus of historical dialogues which I developed with Prof. Merja Kytö (see details below). Topic areas include: pragmatic markers, interjections, lexical repetitions, certain grammatical aspects (e.g. the conjunction 'and'), and certain sociolinguistic areas (e.g. gender).

I have an active interest in historical (im)politeness. I recently collaborated with Daniel Kádár, and we co-edited Historical (Im)Politeness Research (2010; Peter Lang).

I am an editor-in-chief of the Journal of Pragmatics, a job I share with Neal Norrick.

Stylistics

My particular interest here has been cognitive stylistics, one of the most distinctive and most recent developments in stylistics, combining insights from linguistics and cognitive psychology. My research in this area has culminated in Language and Characterisation: People in Plays and other Texts (2001; Longman), a book which attempts to describe how readers understand characters in fictional texts. The main focus of this book on play-texts (particularly Shakespeare) reflects another research interest in stylistics: the language of drama. I have co-edited (with Mick Short and Peter Verdonk) a collection of papers on the language of drama, Studying Drama: From Text to Context (1998; Routledge), and(with Elena Semino) a collection, Cognitive Stylistics: Language and Cognition in Text Analysis (2002; John Benjamins), which was designed to define the field of cognitive stylistics. Most recently, I have returned to my Shakespearean interests and edited (with Mireille Ravassat) Stylistics and Shakespeare: Transdisciplinary Approaches (2011; Continuum). I am planning further work on Shakespeare, deploying the corpus-based methodology.

History of English

I have published numerous papers in the area of historical corpus linguistics, often with a historical pragmatics slant. Corpus Linguistics has had a dramatic impact on the nature of historical language studies in the 1990s. Many corpora of historical texts have been constructed, but these have focussed on literary or scholarly texts, which is a peculiar situation given the acknowledged importance of spoken interaction in language change. With grants from the British Academy and the AHRB, I collaborated with Prof. Merja Kytö in the construction of acorpus of speech-related Early Modern English texts.The Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760 stands at approximately 1.2 million words and contains the following text-types (drawn with reliable sources): trial proceedings, witness depositions, play-texts, dialogue in prose fiction, didactic dialogues (including language teaching textbooks).The corpus is available to the academic community for free (via the Oxford Text Archive or the ICAME disk). This corpus is the basis of the monograph on Early Modern English dialogues referred to above.

I have produced the second edition of my textbook History of English (2 nd edn., 2005; Routledge). The first edition was successful, so Routledge tells me. However, I am much happier with the second edition. Here I am deeply indebted to all those around the world who took the trouble to provide feedback on the first edition.

Other

I maintain interests in a variety of other areas, especially areas relating to the study of the English Language. I recently led the team that produced the huge (718 paged!) textbook English Language: Description, Variation and Context (with P. Kerswill, R. Wodak, F. Katamba and T. McEnery) (2008; Palgrave). It contains 39 chapters, covering structural, sociolinguistic, functional, interactional, contextual, etc. aspects of the English language. A distinctive feature of the book is that all contributors and editors are (or in two cases were) based here in Lancaster.

Potential Doctoral Proposals

• Pragmatics (particularly involving sociopragmatics, politeness theory, speech act theory, corpus-based pragmatics)
• History of English (specifically Early Modern English) (particularly involving historical pragmatics, historical sociolinguistics, historical corpus linguistics)
• Stylistics (particularly involving the stylistics of drama, corpus stylistics)

Publications

Books

Authored books

• 2011. Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge University Press, 292pp.
• 2010. Speech in Writing: Explorations in Early Modern English Dialogues. Cambridge University Press (with Merja Kytö), 472pp.
• 2001. Language and Characterisation: People in Plays and other Texts, (Longman) Pearson Education, 336pp.
• 1997. History of English, London: Routledge, 103pp.

Second editions

• 2005. History of English, London: Routledge, 134pp.

Edited books

• 2011. Stylistics and Shakespeare: Transdisciplinary Approaches, Continuum, 288pp.(with Mireille Ravassat)
• 2010. Historical (Im)Politeness Research. Studies in Language and Communication,Vol. 65. Bern: Peter Lang, pp.300 (with Daniel Kádár)
• 2009. English Language: Description, Variation and Context. Palgrave, 718pp. (with Paul Kerswill, Ruth Wodak, Francis Katamba and Tony McEnery)
• 2002. Cognitive Stylistics: Language and Cognition in Text Analysis, Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 333pp. (with Elena Semino.)
• 1998. Exploring the Language of Drama: From Text to Context, Routledge, 181pp. (with Mick Short and Peter Verdonk)

Edited journal special issues

• 2008. Impoliteness, Special issue of the Journal of Politeness Research 4(2): 161-337(with Derek Bousfield)
• 2009. Historical Sociopragmatics, Special issue of the Journal of Historical Pragmatics 10(2): 153-287.

Articles

Publications in peer-reviewed journals

· 2011. Nineteenth-century English politeness: Negative politeness, conventional indirect requests and the rise of the individual self. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12(1/2): 49-81 (with Jane Demmen)

· 2010. Cross-cultural variation in the perception of impoliteness: A study of impoliteness events reported by students in England, China, Finland, Germany and Turkey, Intercultural Pragmatics 7-4: 597-624 (with Leyla Marti, Meilian Mei, Minna Nevala, and Gila Schauer)*

· 2010. Conventionalized impoliteness formulae, Journal of Pragmatics 42: 3232-3245.*

· 2009. Historical sociopragmatics: An introduction. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 10(2): 153-160

· 2009. Keyness: Words, parts-of-speech and semantic categories in the character-talk of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet'. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 14(1): 29-59

· 2009. Identifying key sociophilological usage in plays and trial proceedings (1640-1760): An empirical approach via corpus annotation. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 10(2): 260-283(with Dawn Archer)

· 2008. 'Activity types' and 'discourse types': Mediating 'advice' in interactions between foreign language assistants and their supervisors in schools in France and England. Multilingua 27: 297-324 (with Robert Crawshaw and Julia Harrison)

· 2008. Impoliteness: Eclecticism and diaspora. An introduction to the special edition. Journal of Politeness Research 4(2): 161-168 (with Derek Bousfield)

· 2007. A new kind of dictionary for Shakespeare's plays: An immodest proposal, SEDERI (Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies), 17: 47-73

· 2005. 'Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The Weakest Link', Journal of Politeness Research 1: 35-72.

· 2003. 'Impoliteness revisited: With special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects', Journal of Pragmatics 35: 1545-1579 (with Derek Bousfield and Anne Wichmann)

· 2003. 'From "politically correct councillors" to "Blairite nonsense": Discourses of "political correctness" in three British newspapers', Discourse and Society 14 (1): 29-47 (with Sally Johnson and Stephanie Suhr) [Johnson was the lead author]

· 2000. 'An approach to characterisation: The case of Katherina in Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew"', Language and Literature 9 (4): 291-316

· 2000. 'Data in historical pragmatics: Spoken interaction (re)cast as writing', Journal of Historical Pragmatics 1 (2): 175-199 (with Merja Kytö)

· 2000. 'Constructing witches and spells: Speech acts and activity types in Early Modern England', Journal of Historical Pragmatics 1 (1): 97-116 (with Elena Semino)

· 1997. 'Using a corpus to test a model of speech and thought presentation', Poetics 25(1): 17-43 (with Elena Semino and Mick Short) [Semino was the lead author]

· 1996. 'The borrowing of Classical and Romance words into English: A study based on the electronic Oxford English Dictionary', International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 1(2): 199-218 (with Phoebe Clapham)

· 1996. 'Towards an anatomy of impoliteness', Journal of Pragmatics 25: 349-67

· 1996. 'Inferring character from text: attribution theory and foregrounding theory', Poetics 23: 335-61

· 1994. 'Why relevance theory does not explain "The relevance of reformulations"', Language and Literature 3(1): 43-8

· 2011. The development of play-texts: From manuscript to print. In: P. Pahta and A.H. Jucker Communicating Early English Manuscripts. Cambridge University Press, 162-177 (with Jane Demmen)*

· 2010. 'Historical sociopragmatics'. In: Andrea H. Jucker and Irma Taavistainen, editors of Historical Pragmatics, a volume of Handbooks of Pragmatics edited by Wolfram Bublitz, Andreas H. Jucker and Klaus P. Schneider. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 69-96.

· 2010. 'Activity types and characterisation in dramatic discourse'. In: J. Eder, Fotis Jannidis and R. Schneider (eds.) Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film and Other Media. De Gruyter, 176-207 (with D. McIntyre)

· 2010. 'Activity types, incongruity and humour in dramatic discourse'. In: Dan McIntyre and Beatrix Busse (eds.) Language and Style. Continuum, 204-222 (with Dan McIntyre) [McIntyre was the lead author]

· 2009. 'The history of English spelling'. In: Jonathan Culpeper, Francis Katamba , Paul Kerswill, Tony McEnery and Ruth Wodak (eds.) English Language and Lingistics. Palgrave, 244-58 (with Dawn Archer)

· 2009. 'Pragmatics'. In: Jonathan Culpeper, Francis Katamba , Paul Kerswill, Tony McEnery and Ruth Wodak (eds.) English Language and Lingistics. Palgrave, 202-20 (with Gila Schauer)

· 2009. 'Politeness in interaction'. In: Jonathan Culpeper, Francis Katamba , Paul Kerswill, Tony McEnery and Ruth Wodak (eds.) English Language and Lingistics. Palgrave, 523-35.

· 2009. 'Standard English and standardization'. In: Jonathan Culpeper, Francis Katamba , Paul Kerswill, Tony McEnery and Ruth Wodak (eds.) English Language and Lingistics. Palgrave, 223-243. (with P. Kerswill) [Kerswill was the lead author]

· 2009. 'Studying the English Language'. In: Jonathan Culpeper, Francis Katamba , Paul Kerswill, Tony McEnery and Ruth Wodak (eds.) English Language and Lingistics. Palgrave, 3-7 (with Frncis Katamba , Paul Kerswill, Tony McEnery and Ruth Wodak).

· 2009. 'Studying the English Language: Reflections'. In: Jonathan Culpeper, Francis Katamba , Paul Kerswill, Tony McEnery and Ruth Wodak (eds.) English Language and Lingistics. Palgrave, 659-666. (with Charles Alderson) [Alderson was the lead author]

· 2009. 'The Metalanguage of impoliteness: Explorations in the Oxford English Corpus'. In: Paul Baker (ed.) Contemporary Corpus Linguistics. Continuum, pp. 64-86.

· 2009. 'Love - 'a familiar of a devil'? An Exploration of Key Domains in Shakespeare's Comedies and Tragedies'. In: Dawn Archer (ed) What's in a word-list? Investigating word frequency and keyword extraction. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, pp. 136-157. (with Dawn Archer and Paul Rayson) [Joint responsibilities]

· 2009. 'Reflections on a cognitive stylistic approach to characterisation'. In: Jeroen Vandaele and Geert Brône (eds.) Cognitive Poetics (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics Series). Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 125-159

· 2008. 'Pragmatic annotation'. In: Merja Kytö and Anke Lüdeling (eds.) Corpus Linguistics: An International Handbook. Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 613-42 (with Dawn Archer and Matthew Davies) [Archer was the lead author]

· 2008. 'Requests and directness in Early Modern English trial proceedings and play-texts,

· 1640-1760'. In: Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen (eds). Speech Acts in the History of English, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 45-84. (with Dawn Archer)

· 2008. 'Reflections on impoliteness, relational work and power'. In Derek Bousfield and Miriam Locher (eds.) Impoliteness in Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp.17-44.

· 2006. 'Prologue from Bilgewater by Jane Gardham'. In: Goodman, S. and O'Halloran, K.A (eds.) The Art of English: Literary Creativity, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 407-413. (with Elena Semino and Mick Short). (This is an edited reprint of an earlier paper, see below) [Joint responsibilities]

· 2006. '"Good, good indeed, the best that ere I heard": Exploring lexical repetitions in the Corpus of English Dialogues, 1560-1760', in Irma Taavitsainen, Juhani Härmä and Jarmo Korhonen (eds) Dialogic Language Use / Dimensions du dialogisme / Dialogischer Sprachgebrauch, Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki, Vol. 66. Helsinki, pp. 69-85 (with Merja Kytö)

· 2003. 'Sociopragmatic annotation: New directions and possibilities in historical corpus linguistics', in Andrew Wilson, Paul Rayson andTony McEnery (eds.) Corpus Linguistics by the Lune: A Festschrift for Geoffrey Leech, Peter Lang: Frankfurt/Main, 37-58 (with Dawn Archer)

· 2002. 'Computers, language and characterisation: An Analysis of six characters in Romeo and Juliet'. In: Ulla Melander-Marttala, Carin Ostman and Merja Kyto (eds.), Conversation in Life and in Literature: Papers from the ASLA Symposium, Association Suedoise de Linguistique Appliquee (ASLA), 15. Universitetstryckeriet: Uppsala, pp.11-30. (Also available at: http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/corpus_linguistics_links/papers_using_wordsmith.htm)

· 2002. 'A cognitive stylistic approach to characterisation', in Elena Semino and Jonathan Culpeper (eds.) Cognitive Stylistics: Language and Cognition in Text Analysis, John Benjamins, 251-277

· 200.2 'Lexical bundles in Early Modern English: A window into the speech-related language of the past', in Teresa Fanego, Belén Méndez-Naya and Elena Seoane (eds.) Sounds, Words, Texts, Change. Selected Papers from the Eleventh International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (11 ICEHL), Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, John Benjamins, 45-63 (with Merja Kytö)

· 2000. 'Gender voices in the spoken interaction of the past: A pilot study based on Early Modern English trial proceedings', in Dieter Kastovsky and Arthur Mettinger (eds.) The History of English in a Social Context, (Trends in Linguistics, 129), Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 53-89 (with Merja Kytö)

· 2000. 'Language and Context(s): Jane Gardam's Bilgewater', in Bex, T., Burke, M., and Stockwell, P. (eds) Contextualized Stylistics, (Studies in Literature, 29), 131-151 (with Mick Shortand Elena Semino) [Joint responsibilities]

· 2000. 'The conjunction AND in Early Modern English: Frequencies and uses in speech-related writing and other texts', in R. Bermúdez-Otero,David Denison,Richard M.Hogg,and C.B. McCully (eds.) Generative Theory and Corpus Studies: A Dialogue from 10ICEHL, (Topics in English Linguistics, 31), Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 299-326 (with Merja Kytö)

· 1999 'Modifying pragmatic force: Hedges in a corpus of Early Modern English dialogues', in Andreas H. Jucker, Gerd Fritz and Franz Lebsanft (eds.), Historical Dialogue Analysis, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 293-312 (with Merja Kytö)

· 1999 'Investigating non-standard language in a corpus of Early Modern English dialogues: Methodological considerations and problems', in Irma Taavitsainen, Gunnel Melchers and Päivi Pahta (eds.), Writing in Non-standard English, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 171-187 (with Merja Kytö)

· 1998 '(Im)politeness in drama', in Jonathan Culpeper,Mick Short,and PeterVerdonk (eds.) Studying Drama: From Text to Context, Routledge, 83-95

· 1997 'The Comparison of Adjectives in Recent British English', in Terttu Nevalainen and Leena Kahlas-Tarkka (eds.) To Explain the Present: Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen, Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki, Vol. 52, pp. 353-373 (with Leech G.N.) (13 citations) [Joint responsibilities]

· 1997 'Towards a corpus of dialogues, 1550-1750'. In: Language in Time and Space. Studies in Honour of Wolfgang Viereck on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday (Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik - Beihefte 97), ed. by H. Ramisch and K. Wynne. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 60-73 (with Merja Kytö)

· 1996 'Using a corpus for stylistics research: speech presentation', in Jenny Thomasand Mick Short Using Corpora in Language Research, Longman, 110-31 (with Mick Short and Elena Semino) (32 citations) [Semino was the lead author]

· 1995 'Stylistics' in Jan Blommaert, Jan-Ola Östman,and JefVerschueren (eds.) Handbook of Pragmatics, John Benjamins, 513-20 (with Elena Semino)

Encyclopedia entries

• 2010 'Historical pragmatics', 2,000 words for Louise Cummings (ed.) The Pragmatics Encyclopedia. London: Routledge, 188-192.
• 2006 'Drama: stylistic aspects', 10,000 words for Cathy Emmott, editor of 'Text Analysis and Stylistics', a volume of Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd edn.) edited by Keith Brown, Oxford: Elsevier, pp.772-784 (with Dan McIntyre).
• 2002 'Language of Drama', 2,500 words for William Frawley (ed.) Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• 1995 'English Language', 2,500 words for Marion Wynne-Davies (ed.) Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature. London: Bloomsbury.

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Eprints Publications Repository and Bibliographic Database

Jonathan Culpeper has 62 selected publication records listed on this webpage. Use links to access abstracts and full text where available. View all records to sort by date, type and title. For all ePrints records go to http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk

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Associated Keywords: Corpus linguistics, Corpus stylistics, Historical and diachronic corpora, History of English, Politeness, Pragmatic theory, Shakespeare, Stylistics

 

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