School of Languages and Cultures

Summer Research Program: 2020-2021

AVAILABLE PROJECTS

  1. Training interdisciplinary genre awareness through blended learning: An exploration into EAP students’ online annotation of genres across disciplines
  2. Negotiating knowledge in Garrwa conversation
  3. School to university: Journeys of Japanese language learners in Queensland
  4. Creation of web-based language technology learning and teaching resources
  5. Developing e-Dictionaries
  1. Language in social interaction: Exploring humour, identity and offence
  2. Investigations of validity and reliability of C-test and Elicited Imitation task in Japanese
  3. Quantitative and qualitative data management in language studies
  4. The critical investigation of textbooks in South Korea and China
  5. Building an electronic Kukatja language corpus

2. Negotiating knowledge in Garrwa conversation

Project duration:

8 weeks
30 November to 18 December 2020
11 January to 5 February 2021

Project profile: 

COVID-19 considerations:  The project can be completed under a remote working arrangement with zoom meetings with the Supervisor. 

Description:

This project will be investigating how Garrwa people (a First Nations language group from the Borroloola Region in the Northern Territory) make attribute and negotiate authority over language knowledge in small group interactions. Specifically we will be focusing on a series of high quality video recordings made in 2019 of interactions between Garrwa people and researchers around knowledge of plant and animal names. Over the 8 weeks of the project we will be transcribing selected parts of the recordings and using Conversation Analysis methods to examine how decisions are made about ethnobiological knowledge and how authority is claimed and attributed.

Number of hours per week: 

24 hours per week
6 hours/day, 4 days a week

Expected outcomes and deliverables:

Summer scholars will gain skills in transcribing interactive data using the ELAN platform, and in developing corresponding conversation analytic transcriptions. They will also gain skills in applying conversation analytic methods of analysis, especially in the area of ‘epistemics’. Scholars will also be learning about grammar, pragmatics and sociolinguistics of the Garrwa language. Depending on the progress made in this 8 week program, it may be possible to begin work on a publication that would include the scholars as co-authors.

This project is being conducted as part of the ARC discovery project ‘Conversational Interaction in Aboriginal and Remote Australia’ and scholars will have an opportunity to interact with other team members and students both in Brisbane and on Zoom.

Suitable for:

This project is open to advanced (i.e. at the completion of 2nd year or 3rd year) Undergraduate students majoring in Linguistics, including students considering Honours study in Lingusitics. It is particularly suited to students who have undertaken some coursework on Australian Aboriginal languages and pragmatics, but these are not requirements.

Number of participants required: 

3

Primary Supervisor:

Associate Professor Ilana Mushin

Further info: 

Please contact Associate Professor Ilana Mushin via email